I finally caved and spent money to buy a Video on Demand movie (VOD). This means I paid twenty dollars to watch one of the movies that I had been looking forward to seeing the most this year, Antebellum. I had contemplated paying the twenty bucks for other movies, like the King of Staten Island or other scary movies, like the one staring Kevin Bacon, but I just could not pull the trigger on those. For AMC’s A List membership, it was $22, to be able to see three movies per week for a month, so a $20 price point is high, and the Mulan release on Disney for $30 is even crazier. It does not seem like the on-demand releases are doing too well either, because other big named movies do not have VOD planned releases. This puts the movie releases in a state of flux again. Not enough people went to the theaters to see Tenet to fully open the movie theater releases, and not enough people have been buying them on demand to release bigger movies there. Sense I paid the money for it, I tried to make the basement as movie theater like as possible. I hung a blanket up in front of the window, I closed all the doors, and I turned the volume up loud. It was not the same, but it was closer to normal than usual.
Antebellum was about a slave plantation that harvested cotton during the Civil War. The slaves there were treated incredibly poorly, and it attempted to depict what it might be like to be a slave facing all this adversity and thinking about attempting an escape. This was paired with the story of a contemporary author of a political book about how the country was created to keep those disenfranchised in that position, and her book talked about what needed to change. She made appearances on political talking head shoes and went against the conservative viewpoints. There seems to be white people that were against her viewpoints of equality and made it known through creepy interactions and eventually a kidnapping. This was when the movie explained the connection between the stories. (spoilers to come)
This movie had two directors that helped crafted the movie, but one of them had the whole idea for it. I listened to an interview with both directors on The Big Picture, a movie podcast on The Ringer. The whole idea for this story came from one of the directors having a dream. He dreamed about a woman that went through a very painful experience and was crying out for help. He did not know the woman, but he felt like he needed to do something to attempt to help. So he pulled out his phone in the middle of the night and started to write down what happened in a notes app, and that was how this movie eventually came to be, which is incredible. It does make me wonder, the extent to which the content came purely from his dream, how much came from the creative process of having a premise and growing it further.
The area that this movie had political commentary on the most was racial inequality, but it also spoke to gender inequality as well. It felt very reminisce of the Malcom X quote about how the most disrespected, unprotected, and neglected person in America is a black woman. When the movie timeline was in the modern day, it showed that Veronica had a doctorate based off of her knowledge on the constitution, and she wrote a book on how the constitution has continued to lead to the disenfranchisement of minorities, but now it is time for a change. So clearly this was showing that to this day there is still a very present lack of respect for black people and specifically black women. She should have been highly respected for all the work she had done, but she was still being dismissed by white people, especially those in the Deep South. Then when the scenes that took place during the Civil War in the South, clearly there was a very present feeling of racism. The plantation owner had slaves, and those slaves were mistreated. Once the twist was revealed that Veronica and Eden were the same person, the message became even more pronounced. The plantation with the slaves was occurring in the modern day, and it was being run by white racists that kidnapped highly educated black people to make them do hard labor. It showed that clearly the white people did not view the highly educated black people on the same plane of intelligence as them, and they went above and beyond to prove it to them. The biggest example of this was when the white family had just gotten a new arrival of slaves, and the mother allowed the daughter to give one of the new arrivals her new name. It showed their view of the slaves as less than human by giving them new names like they were pets instead of humans.
A particularly important part of the messaging of this movie came from the quotes. These were all quotes that I might not have been able to name who they came from, but they all seemed to draw attention to the same thing, racial inequality. The opening of the movie has a Falkner quote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” This seems to say that there might be parts of society like racial inequality and gender inequality that were typically viewed as actions of the past, but in reality they have never fully died, they are still present, and sadly like Faulkner’s quote says, it may never die, but that does not mean that people cannot continue to fight against prejudice. This sets up the events of the movie well. Another quote that stuck out well was when Veronica told her daughter that, “Sometimes what looks like anger is really fear.” This also stuck out as vitally important to the message of the movie. This quote was referenced to her having an argument with an old white man on a talking head political show. So it shows that there are people in the country that are showing their fear of giving all people equality by acting angry instead. These actions have been seen in the country in the past few months, but even going back to the end of segregation. There has been the fear from some white people that if equality was given to all, that the white monopoly on power would evaporate. There were other good quotes in the movie as well, but the last one I will mention is this, “The unresolved past can certainly wreak havoc on the present.” This quote can be applied to any time in the past where the U.S has tried to create some form of equality, but there always seemed to be some cavoite to these pieces of legislation trying to bring equality to all. There have been poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, red lining, and so much more. Now some of those were resolved, but that does not mean all the problems have been resolved, and if there had been a solid plan form the start for equality, and one that was enforced fairly, then these problems may not have persisted.
This movie was filled with symbolism throughout. My favorite example from the movie came towards the end. Veronica’s character had just killed the confederate general, and instead of just leaving him on the ground, she took down the confederate flag that was hanging nearby, wrapped his body in it, and then she threw the flag covered corpse into their burning box and lit it. Essentially showing the death of the confederacy, and her ability to rise over all the injustices she had faced. Immediately after this action, she went over to the Union uniform that had been thrown in the dirt, and she put it on, continuing the symbolism that she had defeated the confederacy. The movie was also had many small prods that needed to be caught, these seemed to be pointing to all of the small injustices that often get over looked by others, but they can bring up the memories of inequality. Some examples are, instead of being in a presidential suite, Veronica was placed into the Jefferson suite, a president who had slaves being given the honor of having the best room named after him. Then throughout the movie, anytime they were anywhere nice, there were paintings of plantations. Plantations are typically synonymous with slaves. Also it seemed like a hint as to the fact that Eden and Veronica were the same person. Lastly there was the daughter in the old dress on the elevator that drags the black doll out of the elevator with a rope tied around the dolls neck. This was very on the nose of being a racists act, although the meaning might have gone over the little girl’s head that committed it. It showed that the actions of parents can affect their children, this makes it harder to break the chain of racism. This leads to the education system needing to take the teaching of racism and inequality very seriously so that those that may have these preconceived notions, that they can have their minds changed and their biases dropped.
This was a good movie, it did not quite meet my expectations and reach up to the level of Get Out or Us, but it was close. The scenery in which it was filmed was beautiful, it seemed like every scene on the plantation was bursting with colors. There were multiple scenes filmed at sunset with bright oranges shining in the background. When they filmed night scenes, they had a giant moon in the background looming over the scene, and even when it was just the day time in the field color of the plants, sky, and the clothing just seemed to stand out in a beautiful way. With that said, was it worth the $20? I would say no. It was worth watching, but it is not worth over full movie theater price to get a 48-hour rental, it might have been worth it if it gave me ownership of it, but I do not go back and revisit movies too often. I gave the movie an 85, this puts it into third for 2020. I ranked it ahead of The Devil All the Time, by two points, it was much more interesting the whole time, it made me think, and it was much faster pace. Once this gets put onto a streaming platform, I would recommend watching it, but do not pay the money.
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