I Am Because We Are

The question for the cynic is why not? If you are an international celebrity and entertainer like Madonna, why not make a documentary film about your interest in helping a suffering African country after some tabloid controversy about your private adoption? Why not try to change a perhaps cemented image (remember the Girlie Show World Tour days?) with a show of compassion and caring while the camera spotlights a sick African infant dying in your arms? Why not use your celebrity influence to turn heads, and hopefully dollars, towards a million or so orphans? The answer is beautifully depicted in “I Am Because We Are”.

You become weary about the entertainer’s motives when the self-narrated film starts out with too many sentences beginning with “I”. Realizing after all she is not just the narrator but the writer and producer, but for once not the star, she does answer some questions posed by the tabloids that her fans (myself included ) may have been wondering about. Such as: “Why Malawi? - Why now?” But for those answers you will have to watch it yourself. This documentary is not about Madonna, and nor shall this review be.

The film spotlights the sub-Saharan country of Malawi - one of the poorest nations in the world with a population of about 12 million, where more than one-twelfth of its citizens are orphaned children who lost their parents to AIDS. In exploring the impact of such a large number of parentless children, heart-wrenching personal stories of loss are revealed, complete with names of victims; pictures and video of overflowing orphanages, hospitals and juvenile prisons that go on like an extended Save the Children ad. Your attention is starting to wane when applicable words of wisdom from well-known experts in their field are interjected. Nobel Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu says “You don’t have to be rich to be good, generous and compassionate,” and from President Bill Clinton: “What we have in common is as important as our interesting differences”.

I appreciated the inclusion of the tumultuous history of Malawi (independent from Britain since 1964 followed by a dictatorship) as an answer to the question – “How did they get this way?” The complex answer to “Why is it staying this way?” - comes in vignettes on extreme poverty, hunger, corruption, violence, lack of education, destructive spiritual rituals, superstition, genital mutilation and a general lack of hope. It would be interesting to watch this film and count just how many times the word desperate is used.

It feels like the filmmakers are ultimately hoping that the viewer will take a look in the mirror, asserting that all people “want to cling to what is familiar even though they know it is holding them back,” and that this cycle of behavior is embedded in citizens not just in Malawi, but around the world. To prove their point, we see visual global images of war, vicious religious ritual, drug use and more. With this premise, the film moves beyond pulling heartstrings and into pushing buttons. And, having one’s buttons pushed is what turns audiences on, provokes thought and action. Bingo-they did it!

So the film starts as a story about the AIDS / orphan epidemic in Malawi and ends as a story about world problems and world solutions. By looking at the globe through the lens of Malawi, the viewer realizes that the film’s overarching message of hope and determination is as contagious as AIDS. In seeing, caring about, and helping Malawi, we may just help ourselves. Only the creative genius of a person like Madonna could spin that so poignantly.

I recommend this film to healthcare providers not just because the cinematography alone is stunning, but for those that have a global and humanitarian interest, it does communicate about many of society’s most challenging issues. I recommend it to all others simply for its look in the mirror philosophy as that may be the proper remedy for any problem, not just in Malawi but in any country, city, home, or hospital room.


Reviewer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Boxes of Popcorn
Written, produced and narrated by: Madonna
Directed by: Nathan Rissman
Available: Entire film can be watched on Hulu and You Tube, also available on DVD

Lost in Laconia

Imagine a young boy that lived isolated in an institution his entire life. Surrounded by grungy brick walls, dark, dank sleeping wards with beds lined up crowded one after another, a large open room with toilets and showerheads without stalls. That same boy becomes a man and is sterilized to prevent reproduction. He never sees the people he was born to for the rest of his life. He has siblings that don’t know he exists. His presence on Earth is barely known by anyone except the nurses, doctors and therapists that care for him at the institution. Now, fast forward eighty plus years. The society that created this institution has undergone a transformation. The civil rights movement has taken place, wars have been fought and lost, and the American dream has changed. This man, that was doomed to a lifetime of condemnation and segregation from the rest of the world, is set free. And, unthinkably, he becomes a productive member of society with a story to tell. That story is Lost in Laconia.

This story is a documentary film about the first institution of its kind (and last) in New Hampshire which between 1903 and 1991 accommodated men and women who were “labeled feebleminded, deficient or disabled”. It is the work of New Hampshire resident Gordon DuBois, who was employed in several different positions at the school beginning in 1977, until it closed its doors permanently in 1991. Mr. Dubois, who wrote and produced this film, was an amateur historian who felt compelled to safeguard the historical files, pictures, and footage, from the Laconia State School when it looked like they were going to be discarded during the school’s final days. Mr. Dubois reports that he couldn’t imagine at the time that he would eventually create the means for this beautiful, tragic, heart wrenching, and cathartic story to be told. The coaxing of a group of parents involved in the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability Leadership Series and the help of filmmaker Bil Rogers was the impetus. Combining many oral histories with previous employees, “inmates” (as they were called) and their families with historical archives, twenty years after the Laconia State School closed, our eyes are opened.

This film does exactly what it is supposed to do; it takes you on a historical journey, beginning where it should, at the beginning. It very poignantly takes the viewer on a ride through the account of how humanity handled “those less fortunate”. Answering some puzzling questions regarding how and why our society decided that the best thing for certain children and adolescents who had been rejected by society was to stigmatize, institutionalize and isolate them. Ending the excursion in the current day, with a current lens, which is zoomed in on the triumph of the victims, despite challenges, and the tragedy of what it is they are still unable to overcome. Perhaps due to the stress that resulted from some reported horrific experiences at the Laconia State School.

Lost in Laconia is one of those thought provoking films that puts a spotlight on the history of this specific institutional paradigm in order to help us remember what not to do with those we don’t know what to do with. I highly recommend Lost in Laconia. There were similar institutions throughout the country at the time, and the Laconia State School may or may not have an uncommon story. But, it is a story worth seeing and hearing. Especially for those in the helping profession, like nurses, who feel provocation caring for those with modern day sociocultural challenges. Heartfelt thanks go out to Mr. Dubois and his associates for their insight and presumption in making this film. Because of them Lost in Laconia has been found.

Reviewer Rating: 4 out of 5 Boxes of Popcorn
Produced by Community Support Network
Written and Produced by Gordon DuBois
Directed, Produced, and Edited by Bil Rogers
Available at local New Hampshire Libraries or on the web at www.csni.org

The filmmakers are currently working on an instructional guide to accompany Lost in Laconia. It is intended to be used for educational purposes. If you would like more information about obtaining this film or the guide please visit www.csni.org

The New Medicine

Hosted by Dana Reeve (wife of the late Christopher Reeve) before her untimely death from lung cancer in 2006, this documentary film presented for television by PBS explores the optimal future of medicine on the horizon where technological and human discoveries are harmonized.

Part one of this film explores the mind-body connection in this new era of medicine, by going inside hospitals, clinics, research centers and academic centers to explore new ways of knowing about the influence our body has on our mind and vice versa. The filmmakers uncover the paradigm shift on the medical horizon from patient to person: the whole person, including the mind. Allopathic medicine has always used feeling terms such as “hope”, “worry”, and “broken hearted” in relation to the patient’s experience which suggests an understanding that the mind and body have a relationship of paramount importance. Why then doesn’t the current medical model treat the mind and body as one, or at least treat the mind concurrently when treating the body?

The film highlights many different research studies with favorable outcomes when the extraordinary power of the mind-body connection is embraced. At Duke University Medical Center, Tammy was 26 weeks pregnant when her water broke. Duke offers Tammy daily guided imagery sessions aimed at controlling her stress level knowing that stress in an uncomplicated pregnancy can induce labor and in a healthy person can suppress the immune system. By treating her mind, Tammy’s stress level is lowered and best possible outcomes are likely to improve, and they do. This is one of many examples highlighted where the use of integrative (alternative, complementary, holistic, etc) medicine is used to cross the mind body chasm.

Part two of this film explores the physician patient relationship, and the dehumanizing of patients in a technologically advanced healthcare system. The neglected “softer side of medicine” is being taught at Drexel University School of medicine using actors to role play with medical students in the discussion of difficult conversations. Like when a doctor has to inform a mother that her child’s fight with cancer is coming to an end since there is nothing else modern medicine can do. Drexel recognizes the inadequacy of the current model where physicians spend an average of six minutes with each patient, and are “so enamored of technology and specialization” that they have lost sight of the individual. The individuall, that we know after viewing part one of this film, has the power to heal themselves if guided so. Drexel recognizes the tendency for seasoned physicians to replace optimism with cynicism.

Part two goes on with several vignettes of patients whose failure or success in the healing process was directly related to their relationship with their own healing; guided or misguided as it was, by modern healthcare. While probing into our current healthcare system’s propensity to give science an embrace (and leave the patient in need of one), it is asserted that “science can inform medicine....but it can never explain it all” and the human condition is in direct relationship to healing. It wraps up with the notion that “caring is at the root of the physician patient relationship and in the absence of curing, healing is still taking place that involves caring.”

At this writing this film is five years old. We still have not reached the caring equals healing horizon. Arthur Kleinmen, MD at Harvard University states “There is no reason we can’t be as humanly sophisticated as we are technologically sophisticated” and I agree. I criticize the film for embracing only the physician patient relationship in part two and excluding nursing and the other disciplines. The film doesn’t have the cinematography, bells and whistles of other nationally released big screen documentaries. It forgoes any red carpet aspirations and puts the spotlight on the patient, which is where it belongs.

3 out of 5 boxes of popcorn
This film is not rated.
Directed by Muffie Meyer
Available on DVD and Netflix.

Food, Inc.

Food , Inc. explores the root of the evil we call nourishment in this country. Everything to be believed about the quintessential American farmer, the effort of the Food and Drug Administration to protect us from harm, and eating chicken being better for you than eating beef will be challenged while watching Food, Inc. What can now be understood is that corn rules, food is poison, farmers are forced to be cruel to animals and the earth to survive, and the government agencies in place to protect you from harm are in cahoots with profit driven food corporations. The stories covered in this documentary may force viewers to become the most disillusioned genetically modified food eating consumers in history.

Take for instance the story about the chicken farmer Carole Morrison, who is expected to grow a chicken from egg to filet in six weeks. This requires an atmosphere for the chickens that, well, isn’t very chicken like. No light, no room to move, and the inability to walk because they are so overgrown with steroids and an unnatural diet that their bodies are too heavy for their legs to carry them. When Carole who makes a measly $18,000/year raising and selling these chickens puts her foot down about this chicken abuse and fights the giant corporation that buys her chicken meat about not allowing light into her chicken house, they cancel her contract.

Then there is the tragic story about an E.Coli breakout that caused the death of Barbara Kowalcyk’s young son and her subsequent plight to put a stop to any such future tragedies. The story behind the story; well it turns out that the cows aren’t supposed to eat corn, which allows unnatural bacteria to grow in their manure, which cows stand in up to their knee caps, unable to move, in an overcrowded corral. Nor is the rain water that runs through the feces filled cow farm supposed to be able to spill down into the spinach field next door. If you are wondering why we feed cows corn if it isn’t part of their native diet, the answer is simple: cheap corn equals cheap feed, equals cheap meat, equals more meat sold, equals big profits for the meat company. Where is the Food and Drug Administration while all this filth is running through farms you ask? Not doing inspections apparently, for according to Food, Inc., they performed approximately 40,000 less inspections in 2006 than they did in 1972.

All these stories force the viewer to wonder about the American food consumer’s lack of a relationship with their food; especially if that food once had eyes. Joel Salatin, a good old fashioned “natural” farmer in the film said “industrial food is not honest food” and he believes you can “meet the need without compromising integrity”. In other words the consumer should demand that we let cows act like cows, and chickens act like chickens and let food corporations either cowboy up or squander. We should buy more and locally grown, fresh, organic foods. Which begs another question the movie explores; “what if you can’t afford it?”. Everyone knows the cheaper the food is the worse it is for you (think fast food), and this film clearly points to big food business, with bigger profits, and gigantic heavy hands as the reason. Large food corporations rebuttal by saying they are doing us a huge favor with the level of efficiency they provide and that America would have a food shortage if it wasn’t for their iron fisted national network. Food, Inc. sheds a beaming light on what now appears to be an obvious fact: efficiency equals bad food.

Is this corporation-farmer-consumer paradigm sounding familiar to caregivers reading this? Big business with big profits (pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies) forcing the middle man (nurse and other healthcare providers) to manipulate the product (caregiving) at risk to the consumer (patient). I highly recommend Food, Inc., if not for your own health and well-being, for the health and well-being of your patients.

Talk to Her

Described as suspenseful, tragic, and comedic, “Talk to Her” is suspenseful, and tragic, but I could find nothing humorous in this provocative, and stimulating yet disturbing and all socially, spiritually, and artistically complicated 14th film by Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodovar. The complicated part is what makes this one of the most difficult reviews I have written to date.

Revolving around the obsessions of the sexually ambiguous nurse Benigno (Javier Camara), who cares for those who can’t care for themselves and obsesses over everything they themselves are obsessed with. The main object of Benigno’s attention and affection (which is where the complications begin) is a patient in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). She ended up in Benigno’s facility a week after the voyeuristic Benigno fell in love with her while watching her out the window dancing at the ballet studio across the street from the apartment he lives in with his recently deceased mother. The mother whom he cared for exclusively (neglecting his own needs entirely) until her death. This is where the inappropriate juxtaposition of caregiver and cared for begins and continues with just about every relationship Almodovar has created in this Oscar winning screenplay.

Resonating with the nurse viewer may be Benigno’s insistence that the comatose patient can hear everything you say, (hence the title “Talk to Her”), his belief that outward beauty is still as important as inner health in promoting healing, and that caring for the infirmed is a privilege. Benigno tells his friend Marco (Dario Grandinetti) whose bullfighter girlfriend is also stricken with PVS “the last four years have been the richest of my life taking care of Alicia”, provoking two reactions at once: how beautiful and how sad. Resonations aside, repulsion is abound with accusations of patient sexual abuse, breaches of patient confidentiality, and the offbeat portrayal of most of the other nurses in the film. The two reactions now: how sad and how pathetic.

This is how the entire movie goes, contrasting ideals smashed together in the name of art. Layer and layer upon allegorical themes seemingly meant to jerk the viewer away from everything they think is true about life. Those who are attracted to the kind of social allegory this movie presents should be prepared for some bizarre side stories like when Benigno is describing to Alicia a silent film he went to see about a shrinking man who climbs all over and inside his lover’s body. Or when Benigno’s Alicia (Leonor Watling) and Lydia (Rosario Flores) the bullfighter and goring victim locked in by the affliction of PVS are propped out on the terrace at the hospital in brightly colored robes, fully made up with cosmetics and sunglasses.

And so, “Talk to Her” twists, turns, and bumps on like the unpaved back roads of Spain, pulling at the strings and lighting the fire of your heart, and perhaps to some, tickling your funny bone. My face was forever stern, and probably wrinkled in perplexity. As an avid Almodovar fan, I truly appreciate the film and will admit it stayed with me for weeks after first viewing it (just what the author intended?). As a critic and a nurse I am not confident to recommend it, but will, with the understanding that nurses are deeply contemplative and imaginative beings that at the least will appreciate the thought provoking challenges presented to the viewer.

“Talk to Her” is rated R
Reviewer Rating: 3 out of 5 boxes of popcorn (2 with my nursing hat on, 4 with my movie and Almodovar loving hat on=3)
Sony Pictures Classics
Written and Directed by: Pedro Almodovar
Spanish with English subtitles

Starring Javier Cámara (Benigno), Darío Grandinetti (Marco), Leonor Watling (Alicia), Rosario Flores (Lydia), Geraldine Chaplin (Katarina), Mariola Fuentes (Rosa) and Lola Dueñas (Matilde).

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)

As a 1987 Harlem teenager, Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is portrayed as and feels like a poor excuse for a human. Never mind the well known over-indulgent gen x-er teenagers you knew. Precious is an obese, illiterate, still in the 8th grade sixteen year old mother of a child with Down’s syndrome (affectionately called “Mongo”), living in a slum of an apartment in Harlem with a welfare mother and absentee incestuous father. At this point I imagine your attention is grabbed… no gripped. But hold on now, for the emotional ride of your movie watching life.

In between beatings from her mother, Precious mopes around the streets of Harlem eating fried chicken and getting kicked by neighborhood gang boys. You know Precious realizes how bad she has it when she tells her teacher Ms. Blu Rain (Paula Patton) “Sometimes I wish I was dead. But um lookin up, um lookin up for a piano to fall.” More evidence that she is aware of her current wretched situation in life is obvious as she fantasizes about a different life. Lee Daniels, the genius director of this film, has uncannily put the viewer in the roller coaster seat. You actually feel like you are seeing everything through Precious’ eyes. Like when Precious is fantasizing about walking the red carpet, performing on stage, or more profoundly looking in the mirror to see a thin, attractive, white woman. And then... her mother’s fist slams the side of her head.
When she discovers she is pregnant with her second child conceived with her father, Precious has the where with all to try and find a way out of the hell she is living in. She enters herself into an alternative school “Each One, Teach One” where she needs to get and 8.0 or better to obtain her GED. There she finds herself surrounded by the comfort of other teenage girls trying to overcome the challenges of inner city life. They celebrate the birth of her baby with her and create camaraderie around mutual challenges, even if it is to out-do each other.
Precious’s mother Mary (pun intended) is nothing of the sort. In this Oscar, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award winning role, Mo’nique has created a monster of a character as memorable and frightening as Hannibal Lecter. The dissonance created by this character presents the viewer with the ultimate challenge of feeling sympathy in a final scene where Mary tries to excuse her inexcusable behavior to Ms. Weiss (Mariah Carey) her social worker with the story of how she became the monster that she is. You see her boyfriend, the love of her life, and Precious’s father was having sex with his daughter, and she got violently (literally) jealous. The viewer is torn between a “boo, hoo, let’s call the waambulance” reaction, and a genuine empathy for this pathetic mother of a pathetic daughter and granddaughter.

I was disappointed to see the role of the nursing assistant who they call Nurse John (well played by Lenny Kravitz) portrayed. Once again the entertainment industry has taken a poetic license that borders on disrespectful to the profession. Not only is it inappropriate to call Nurse John a nurse when he isn’t one, but when Precious and her friends start verbalizing sexual fantasies about John and then he actually kisses Precious and shows up at a party in her honor, the portrayal starts to become frustratingly inaccurate. Maybe in Harlem that’s how health care professionals act, but I highly doubt it and take offense to the insinuation.

The goal of these reviews is to find the pertinence to the role of today’s nurse and highlight it in such a way that somehow enhances that role. Well if Precious had a nursing care plan, it would focus on Maslow’s safety and security and love and belonging and look something like this: Disturbed Body Image r/t morbid obesity; Risk-prone health behavior r/t the fact that she lives in bullet flying Harlem; Ineffective Coping m/b eating a bucket of fried chicken to curb her anxiety, Risk for Compromised Human Dignity r/t being used as a punching bag by her mother; Powerlessness and let’s not forget Hopelessness.

This movie, although excellent in every way, is hardly entertaining. It is a thought provoking, heart wrenching, and passion evoking, emotional tug-of-war-which makes it a genius of a movie. If you like the thrill and scare of rollercoasters, this is the “Cyclone” of movies.

Boston society of film Critics award for best ensemble cast and best supporting actress Mo’Nique. Golden Globe award for best supporting actress in a motion picture Mo’Nique.
Academy Award Winner for Best Actress Mo'Nique.

“Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire” is rated PG-13
Reviewer Rating: 4 out of 5 boxes of popcorn
Samuel Goldwyn Films
Written by: Sapphire (book), Geoffrey Fletcher (adapted screenplay)
Directed by: Lee Daniels
Available on Blu-Ray, DVD, and Digital Download.

MOVIE: Grey Gardens (2009)

Debutante life in the 1930’s wasn’t all it was cracked up to be for Edith Beale. All she ever wanted was to be a stage performer. Her Manhattan businessman husband Phelan Beale (Ken Howard) has had enough of her weekend party antics at their family retreat in the Hamptons and finally leaves her, sending their two boys to boarding school and dragging their youngest daughter back to the big apple to find a sensible husband and career. Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (Jessica Lange) spends the rest of her days in her beloved East Hampton home, Grey Gardens, reminiscing (but rarely complaining) about the former perfectly grandiose life that the viewer is never sure she had. Based on the true story of Edith Beale and her daughter of the same name (Drew Barrymore) with re-enacted excerpts from the 1975 documentary of the same title, young Edith, better known as “Little Edie” and infamously known as the cousin of Jacquelyn Kennedy Onassis, is soon after her arrival pulled out of Manhattan (where she aspires to become a not-so sensible singer and dancer but ends up in the bed of a married man), and is sent back to Grey Gardens with her lonely, needy mother.

The mother and daughter live for the next 25 years in relative seclusion, with no vocation and therefore no income, spending out their trust funds feeding dozens of cats and sustaining on vanilla ice cream while Grey Gardens falls down around them and becomes infested with rodents. The fact that Bouvier family members are living in squalor makes national headlines forcing the attention of niece and cousin Jacquelyn (excellently portrayed by Jeanne Tripplehorn) who shares the news that “Ari and I will help you”.

To call this story a “riches to rags” one sounds not only like too much of a cliché, it doesn’t do justice to the magnificence of the characters perfectly depicted by the award winning performers or the allure of attempting to answer the “what is happening to these people” question that looms over the film. From the opening scenes showing the glamour of Little Edie’s Manhattan “coming out” party and the summer move into their well-staffed beach front Hamptons retreat to living in the squalor that precedes the neighbors’ complaints to the Suffolk County Board of Health, this film tickles the nerve, funny bone, senses, and any other body part needing stimulation.

“Grey Gardens” is one of those stories that is intriguing enough in its own right, but from the perspective of a provider that has always been curious about how individuals “end up that way” when presented with the challenges and situations in life that the Beale’s are eventually faced with, it is nothing less than mesmerizing. So the question, “how does one become a crazy cat lady” is put forth, but never completely answered. Was big Edith always crazy? Did the rejection of her husband or the stage trigger something unseen in this film? Was Little Edie psychologically abused leading to her overwhelming co-dependence? This movie equally evokes feelings of disgust (passing off cat food as pâté to the former First Lady) combined with intense compassion for a possibly mentally ill mother and a co-dependent daughter who gets dragged along, and down, for the ride. The most extravagant question is what would medical or psychological intervention have actually done for the Beale women? Edith proclaims perfect happiness with her situation, and Little Edie professes that she is simply doing what any loyal daughter in her situation would do. There was once a homeless person brought into a community hospital emergency room, overly intoxicated and soaked in urine with a bankbook in his pocket showing a $15,000 balance. Like that situation, the questions and (lack of) answers aside, “Grey Gardens’ provokes the viewer to look at their own assumptions and prejudices about socioeconomic class, the stigma of mental illness and how exactly should we confront the eccentricities of “the crazy cat lady”?

“Grey Gardens” rated TV-PG
Reviewer Rating (on a 1-5 scale): 4 delicious boxes of popcorn
HBO Films
Written By: Michael Sucsy and Patricia Rozema
Directed By: Michael Sucsy
Nominated for 17 Primetime Emmy Awards and Winner of Outstanding Made for Television Movie, Best Lead Actress, Miniseries or Movie-Jessica Lange; and Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie-Ken Howard.
Available on DVD

MOVIE: American Violet (2009)

Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie) is a 24-year-old African American mother of four children under the age of eight, living the low income apartment complex Arlington Springs in Melody, Texas. Despite her apparent lot in life, she is portrayed as a church going, hard working diner waitress, who has made her mistakes but is still a good mother, person and citizen. But then that doesn’t make for a Hollywood movie...so the rest of the story.

Arlington Springs has been besieged by drug raids from the county police. The raid scene on screen looks like one staged for Tony Montana, complete with helicopter, and S.W.A.T. team with Kevlar vests; hardly worthy of a small town Texas housing project. These people must have done something pretty heinous! Dee Roberts is lucky enough not to be home during the raid, but the police find her waiting tables and drag her out in handcuffs in front of all her loyal customers (she must have done something REALLY bad!). During the booking process she is under the assumption she is arrested for hundreds of dollars in unpaid parking tickets. When she is shockingly charged with distributing narcotics in a school zone, she vehemently conveys her innocence. Unfortunately, her court appointed lawyer is in cahoots with the corrupt district attorney, Calvin Beckett (Michael O’Keefe) who is pressing charges. Her lawyer tries to persuade her to take a plea bargain and walk out of the filthy county jail and back home to her children that very day, OR rot in prison for the next four months awaiting trial since posting her $50, 000 bail bond is not an option. Dee is clever enough to realize that being a convicted felon means she would no longer be an upstanding citizen and waits it out in jail. Dee’s mother, Alma Roberts (Alfre Woodward) smothered with caring for her grandchildren during the ordeal encourages her seemingly innocent daughter to take the plea bargain. In the meantime, Alma has their congregation members sign a petition speaking to Dee’s positive character and the judge agrees to let her out on a reduced bail. Things are looking up! However, all the release means to Dee is that she unjustly spent 21 days in the abhorrent county jail while the abusive father of her children and his child molesting girlfriend tried to assume custody of her kids. Dee is out for vindication when along comes clever Yankee and ACLU lawyer, David Cohen (Tim Blake Nelson) and white Texas local attorney Sam Conroy (Will Patton), who attempt to persuade her in a direction that, for obvious reasons, never entered her mind: suing the D.A. for racial profiling.

Like many American stories, and while preserving some mystery of the storyline, as Dee’s Pastor Reverend Sanders (Charles S. Dutton) said, this story is about a woman who “struggled, suffered, and prevailed”. The plot has a bit of an “Erin Brokovichish” feel to it, watching Dee put herself on the line for the future greater good, but the dramatic scenes are extremely gripping and the acting is well above average. Beharie is convincing in her first starring role and the supporting cast no doubt made her job even easier.

“American Violet’, is based on the true 2000 story of Regina Kelly. The backdrop shows snapshots of the historic Bush vs. Gore election coverage and subsequent Supreme Court ruling. It magnifies (just as those events had) the implications and ramifications of the power of the American justice system. It forces the viewer to consider fundamental questions about the law, prejudices, family values, and the subjective definition of survival. When Alma is encouraging her innocent daughter to take the plea bargain and plead guilty as a drug dealer, it offers a perspective on the helplessness and desperation of her socioeconomic and ethnic population. Your heart wrenches for the children, who are obviously well cared for, but one can’t help wonder what their future holds. Will the perseverance of their feisty mother be enough? The oppression evident in “American Violet” has the onlooker gasping for air. The shortness of breath eventually subsides, but not without the care of family, friends, community and strangers willing to trust.

“American Violet” is rated PG-13
Reviewer Rating: 3 ½ boxes of popcorn
Samuel Goldwyn Films
Written by: Bill Hanley
Directed by: Tim Disney (Yes, as in Walt who was his great uncle)
Winner of the 2009 New Hampshire Film Festival for “Best Feature”
Available on Blu-Ray, DVD, and Digital Download.