CAIN & ABEL & EVE (The Remix)
This film is inspired by the Biblical story about Cain and Abel but with a bit of Eve and the Serpent Apple added into the mix.
The film is beautifully shot; and the costumes, music, dancing, and the 40's vehicles are entertaining elements indeed.
The story however is a gumbo bag of blues. We are talking racism, Jim Crow, betrayal, a marital affair, wife abuse, incest; corruption, and lost love; and those are the major chords.
The story is accompanied by narration via letters given to a White bureaucrat by a Black old woman in the hopes that a murder that occurred decades ago is solved. The flashbacks begin.
There are two brothers. Willie Earl the eldest is dad's fave son and can play a mean trumpet. The younger Bayou is illiterate and looked upon as being soft and not so smart. The father treats Bayou like an unwanted step-child, to say the least. The older brother joins the dad in the "bullyfication" of Bayou. However, the mom Hattie Mae is always there to defend Bayou. The loser dad jettisons the family to pursue a career as a musician and the older brother, later on, follows the dad's lead.
As it turns out Bayou is an amazing songbird and this becomes the saving grace for Bayou as well as his ingrate brother who just returned home and tries to hide his failure with braggadocio tales of triumphs.
Bayou meets a light-skinned Black female named Leanne and they start to fulfill each other's voids. They fall in love to the dismay of her parents. Leanne's conniving evil and also light-skinned mother then takes her away to find a better life elsewhere and leaves Bayou drowning in tears while her neanderthal father laughs at Bayou's distraught.
Eventually, Leanne and Bayou achieve success in their own way. Bayou via singing the blues and Leanne via effectively posing as a Caucasian and then marrying a promising rich White politician. On a suspend reality note; Leanne still looked like a light skin African-American with physical attributes and all so it is incredulous how she got away with it.
The brother Willie Earl thinks he is a star but ends up basically as a glorified sideman in his brother's band. This irks him to no end. He starts an intimate relationship with heroin and becomes a thorn in his brother's backside. Eventually, it causes Willie Earl to commit the ultimate betrayal.
Bayou and Leanne do cross paths again and renew their amorous ways. They ignore the warnings of family and friends and continue with their dangerous liaison. Leanne becomes pregnant and she maintains a vigil on the baby's skin color stressing out if it is becoming darker.
In the end, Bayou who is the protagonist; the good son, and the decent human being turns out to also be an emotional fool. Bayou bites the apple and his selfish actions lead to wrecking his mother's business; the death of two so-called bodyguards; the lives of his band-mates being jeopardized and unfortunately it leads to facilitating his own demise.
Bayou was a bit absent in the cap after all. As it is often preached in books, sermons, and speeches; let go of the ego.
Generally from an educational POV, nothing was said about the evils of racism and Jim Crow that haven't been expressed before in films or other platforms. There were no major profound insights into human relationships. As far as any redeeming qualities of the featured male characters; well they didn't fare well as bastions of morality or responsibility. They could have learned a thing or two from Hattie Mae.
The Black passing for White angle has been touched on before and I have no problem with it being explored again. However, in my opinion, it was done more effectively in other films like Shadows, Imitation of Life (with Fredi Washington), and even Show Boat albeit in the 30's/40's you often needed to use a White actress due to the attitudes of the times. Additionally, these days microscopes are more powerful and abundant and thus can be a formidable task for today's filmmaker when it comes to revisiting old themes.
Justice was not served in the case of Bayou's murder. Apparently, it will not ever be served if the Confederate flag on the bureaucrat's porch has anything to say about it thus the same ole same ole there. And of course, in regards to the bureaucrat, one is left with a Maury Povich moment.
Nevertheless, the film was an entertaining visual and musical hang. I don't regret watching it and Perry did superb work as a Director, however, in the end, I was left with this nagging thought, "What was the point of this film?"
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