Bob Marley: One Love

 

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green

Bob Marley

The director with Kingsley Ben-Adir

Ziggy Marley with Kingsley Ben-Adir

Haile Selassie

Emperor Haile Selassie's crown

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE           B                                                                                   USA  (104 mi)  2024 ‘Scope  d: Reinaldo Marcus Green

Exodus.  Movement of Jah people!
Exodus.  Movement of Jah people!

Open your eyes (And look within)
Are you satisfied? (With the life you’re livin’?)
We know where we’re goin’

We know where we’re from
We’re leavin’ Babylon
We’re goin' to our Fatherland

Bob Marley - Exodus (Live At The Rainbow 4th June 1977) YouTube (7:24)

While this is an authorized biography from the Bob Marley family and estate, co-produced by son Ziggy and Bob’s wife Rita Marley, also daughter Cedella, while another son Stephen is the music supervisor, but that by no means indicates it’s better, though it should be, as the filmmaker has access to extensive material no one else has, so it should be more accurate and more thoroughly comprehensive, delving into the music and hidden complexities of his life.  By contrast, Sofia Coppola’s recent film Priscilla (2023) couldn’t even play an Elvis song, as his estate wouldn’t allow it, but that’s a much better film, made by a director with a more elaborately constructed artistic vision.  This, on the other hand, feels more conventional, yet there was nothing conventional about reggae legend Bob Marley who took the world by storm, combining American doo-wop and rhythm-and-blues with an odd new rhythm accentuating the offbeat, whose Rastafarian message of peace, love, and unity was embraced by a public clamoring for more, where the main thing was always the message contained in his music about how we live life and how we treat others.  The Marley family imprint is all over this film, actually introduced in a brief clip by Ziggy Marley, where this is something of a valentine to his father, paying tribute to the loving relationship between Bob and Rita, as the film presents him as his adoring family sees him, and how they want the rest of the world to remember him, though they were no longer together by the end, having survived the extramarital affairs, confessing in her memoirs No Woman No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley, she became more “like his sister, his mother, and his guardian angel.”  Making no attempt to tell the story of his life, this encapsulates only a brief period in the mid 70’s, a time of turmoil in Jamaica, where rival political factions, the American backed Jamaica Labour Party of former Prime Minister Edward Seaga and the socialist People’s National Party of the sitting Prime Minister Michael Manley, ended up unleashing rampant gang violence that swept the island, creating panic and confusion, leading to a state of emergency, giving the military and the police extraordinary powers to quell the storm, where some thought it may have been a plot to rig the election.  During this period, just days before Marley planned to give a free Smile Jamaica Concert promoting peace organized by Manley in order to ease tensions, politically motivated gunmen attempted to assassinate Marley and his wife, shooting both, yet each survived, with rival factions believing the concert was an excuse to hold a rally in support of Manley.  While still performing, briefly, exposing his wounds, this incident traumatized Marley and his family, sending Rita and the children to the United States to live in safety, while spending two years afterwards in self-imposed exile with his band in London where most of this film takes place, much of it told through flashback visions and stream-of-conscious memories, creating an internalized picture of the personal anguish he was going through.

The film is an excuse to reimmerse yourself in the legendary music of Bob Marley, which is easily the best part of the picture, as he almost singlehandedly gave rise to reggae music as an art form, extending the reach worldwide, following up on Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come (1972), where the superb musical soundtrack (The Harder They Come (Original Soundtrack Recording) ...), featuring some of Kingston’s best acts, introduced reggae and its culture to the world.  British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir, previously starring as Malcolm X in Regina King’s ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI (2020) and Barack Obama in the TV mini-series THE COMEY RULE (2020), gives a captivating performance as Marley, while British actress Lashana Lynch provides a standout performance as Rita, as she literally shines, bringing firmness and compassion to the role, where her colorful presence as a member of the I-Threes background singers becomes an integral part of Marley’s stage shows, while there are also interspersed flashback sequences of a young, teenaged Marley (Quan-Dajai Henriques) meeting his future wife, Rita Anderson (Nia Ashi), revealing she’s been by his side since childhood.  Flashbacks also reveal how his white father, a British colonial officer, abandoned him at an early age, leading to recurring visions of a child surrounded by fire, while his father on a horse rides off and leaves him there.  This same image reappears multiple times, as if imprinted into his brain, but by the end of the film the father on the horse has been replaced by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, the revered father of the Rastafari movement where he is worshipped as God incarnate, viewing him as the living messiah that Jamaican Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey prophesized in the 1930’s would lead the African diaspora to freedom (“Look to Africa, when a black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is near!”).  These beliefs are at the heart of Marley’s music, running through the lyrics of his songs, perhaps best exemplified by Bob Marley - War (Official Music Video) - YouTube (3:55), which is based on Selassie’s iconic speech before the United Nations General Assembly on October 4, 1963 (Haile Selassie I's speech to the UN in 1963).    

Until the philosophy which hold one race
Superior and another inferior
is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war, me say war.

That until there are no longer first class
and second class citizens of any nation
Until the color of a man’s skin
is of no more significance than the color of his eyes
Me say war.

Fast forward to where we are today, as war rages unabated in both Ukraine and Gaza while the world looks on in horror and disbelief, yet also indifference, as not much has changed since Selassie made his remarks.  According to the Geneva Academy (Today's Armed Conflicts), an education institution in international humanitarian law, human rights, and transitional justice, there are currently more than 110 armed conflicts happening around the world at the moment, and most are due to ethnicity, color, or resources, just as they always have been, where in the infamous words of 19th century Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Anyone who’s read The Iliad by Homer can attest to this, written 800 B.C.E. yet the wholesale killing continues.  Marley’s revolutionary musical vision, which he always viewed as a transcendent experience, was meant to put an end to the hatred that divides us, using music to spiritually unite the world with a brilliant synthesis of musical styles, employing the language of the King James Bible to sing of revolution, emancipation, and freedom. 

In London, Marley experiences discrimination at the hands of the police and a violent reaction from punk rockers, discovering racism and rebellion go hand in hand, while also encountering cold temperatures and disagreements within the band, but it’s also where his vision began to transform with the epic scope of his album Exodus, Bob Marley & The Wailers - Exodus (Full Album) - YouTube (37:24), using an electric guitar to develop a brand new reggae sound.  Seen with his band leisurely tinkering with a new song, each member gradually joins in as we hear a rough draft of what would eventually become the title song, Exodus - YouTube YouTube (7:41), making a Biblical reference to Moses leading the Israelites out of exile and into freedom, the group is seen practicing the song as it develops, a slowed down, collaborative effort that features a trance-like hypnotic rhythm, punctuated by its resounding chorus of “Exodus, Movement of Jah people!”  Marley even wanted a different album cover, choosing something more simplistic, but immediately recognizable, countering the position of the white people footing the bills, music publicist Howard Bloom (Michael Gandolfini) and Island Records producer Chris Blackwell (James Norton), as they thought it would never work, but this was the first Marley single played on black radio stations in America, expanding what was predominately a white collegiate audience, becoming his first international hit.  It remains perhaps his most transcendent song, where it would be impossible to associate it with anyone other than Bob Marley, whose Rasta identity runs through it like a pulsing heart.  There are flashbacks to his first studio recording as a teenager with the Wailing Wailers, where a gun-toting record producer ("Obituary: Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd") is ready to kick them out until he hears them directing a message to the rude boys on the streets in a new song, The Wailing Wailers - "Simmer Down" (Official Audio) - YouTube (2:50), urging them to stop the violence in the crime-ridden ghettos of Kingston, becoming a number one hit in Jamaica in 1964, signing Marley to his first record contract with Studio One, then the most important recording studio in Jamaica.  Isolated and alone in London, however, feeling the need for his wife’s presence, he sends for her, conjuring up memories of the past, recognizing her as his spiritually aligned soulmate, yet their European success has unintended consequences, with a gala of jet set cocktail festivities exposing a fractured relationship that bubbles up to the surface in a heated argument that comes out of nowhere (Marley had 11 children with 7 different women), where she reminds him, “You swim in pollution, you get polluted,” yet when she initially arrives he’s quietly heard strumming the lyric for a new song on an acoustic guitar, Bob Marley & The Wailers - Natural Mystic (Music Video) YouTube (3:21).

There’s a natural mystic
Blowing through the air
If you listen carefully now you will hear
This could be the first trumpet
Might as well be the last
Many more will have to suffer
Many more will have to die
Don’t ask me why

The release of this album coincided with a sold-out European tour that turned him onto a star, with Marley becoming a messianic figure with legions of followers, and a superstar in Jamaica, returning to the island as a triumphant hero, reconnecting with his children, where he was driven to perform yet another concert that would showcase rival political faction unity, One Love Peace Concert, where the leaders of the opposing parties joined hands, but they publicly continued to blame each other afterwards and the event did little to quell the political violence.  Leading up to that moment, however, Marley is visited by one of the men who shot him (an incident that never happened), remorsefully asking for forgiveness, where his calm response, as if possessed by a higher spirit, is an indication of what kind of man he is, as there’s no revenge or retribution in his heart, suggesting instead that the man needs to forgive himself in the eyes of the Creator.  The low point comes from the discovery he has a rare form of skin cancer on a toe that refuses to heal, injured during a pickup soccer game during the middle of his European tour, but he refused the recommended treatment, which was amputation of his toe to stop the cancer from spreading, as his Rastafarian religion considered it a sin to remove any part of the body.  While this is perfectly understandable, it also cost him his life.  This medical catastrophe sets a darker tone, postponing his planned American and African tours, finally making it to Zimbabwe in 1980 on the eve of their independence from British colonial rule, where crucial to his Rastafari worldview, which is embedded throughout his music, is a reverence for Africa as the source of black life.  He was specifically interested in resisting the racist, colonial systems that Rastafari teachings identify as a source of suffering among black people around the world.  While there is valid criticism that this film doesn’t tell the full story of his life, providing only brief excerpts, never attempting to unlock the key to his massive popularity, it was written by a coterie of writers that omits the darker edges, or even the fact that he wrote the Kaya album at the same time he was in London, yet it does equate with artists today taking a more active role in writing their own legacy and shaping their own image.  This is framed as a love story with a tragic ending, generating plenty of welled-up emotions from both the magnificence of the music and the power of the performances, creating more of a tribute to what Bob Marley stood for, where his message was never more needed than it is today, as there are alarming similarities to the divisiveness of Jamaica during the 70’s and the world of today.  Intolerance and hatred seem to define the new age, spreading like a virus, where the redemptive concepts Marley sang about seem to be forgotten, but this film is a pleasant reminder for a new generation.     

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Live at the Rainbow (Full Concert)  London, June 4, 1977, YouTube (1:23:12)

Belle (2013)

Charles Stanhope, Third Earl of Harrington, and a Servant (1782)

 

Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, 1779

Director Amma Asante

Screenwriter Misan Sagay

Actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Asante on the set with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and James Norton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BELLE                       A-                                                                                                         Great Britain  (103 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d: Amma Asante

I do not know that I find myself anywhere.                                                                                   —Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw)

In honor of Letterboxd writer Nwoye, otherwise known as cleansing my soul of addiction, cleansing my soul of addiction 's profile • Letterboxd, a Chicagoan born in Ghana who passed away in September 2021 from cancer, having thoroughly trashed Barry Jenkins and his recent TV epic 2021 #2 Film of the Year The Undergound Railroad- made for TV, offering his own scathing comments, “beautifying and trivializing Black history and the suffering of Black people for a disingenuous, entitled audience of predatory revisionist (white) liberals,” Review by cleansing my soul of addiction ... - Letterboxd, curiously recommending this film instead, directed by Ghanaian-British director Amma Asante:

2013’s Belle is the only recent work I have seen in which (transatlantic) slavery is appropriately incorporated into narrative constructs, and it will continue to stand the test of time as an incredible modernist treatise that refrains from aggrandizing today’s Black struggle and equating the day-to-day injustices we face as Black Americans to those endured by our ancestors—actual chattel slaves given no rights to exist at all.  If you really care and you want to watch something that pays respect to these scenarios and analyses slavery/liberation/Black life with some integrity and educated historical context, watch Belle.

A British costume drama with historical authenticity, an eloquent counterpoint to the graphically sadistic experience of 12 Years a Slave (2013), yet revealing what that film did not, as the history of slavery belongs to Britain as well as America.  In the period this film takes place there were about 15,000 black people living in Britain, mainly in London, yet less than a third of that population was free.  Written and directed by two black women, the work is directed by Amma Asante and written by Misan Sagay, a Nigerian-British screenwriter who was also a former emergency room doctor, but grew up during a time when the only blacks onscreen were either servants or gangsters, something she wanted to redress.  The inspiration behind the film is a 1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle alongside her white cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray (1,000 × 858 pixels), who grew up with her on the lavish estate at Kenwood House under the care of Lord and Lady Mansfield, commissioned at the time by Lord Mansfield, then Lord Chief Justice of England.  Sagay happened to see the painting, attributed to Scottish artist David Martin, hanging at the Scone Palace in Perthshire, Scotland, and drew inspiration, as it’s one of the first European portrait paintings that subversively portrays a black subject on relatively equal terms with a white aristocrat, shown at the very end of the film, standing in stark contrast to J.M.W. Turner’s Slave Ship (2,152 × 1,616 pixels), a significant departure from the more prevalent historical images of horror, mourning, and despair.  There is also an equally subversive 1650 Velázquez portrait of his enslaved black assistant, Juan de Pareja, who was a skilled artist in his own right, Reframing History: Juan de Pareja.  One of the only reasons that we know about Dido Belle today is attributed to this painting.  There are other British paintings from that time period depicting black subjects, but nearly always peripherally in subservient roles.  Sagay’s comments when she first glimpsed the painting:

I was struck immediately when I saw the painting. It was this black woman staring directly out of the painting. She was vivacious. She was alive. She was painted in movement and yet the picture underneath the caption simply said, “The Lady Elizabeth Murray.” Nothing else. I was intrigued by who this black woman was. Years later, when I went back and the caption had been updated to, “Lady Elizabeth Murray and Dido, the Housekeeper’s Daughter,” I just didn’t buy it. I didn’t think that she was the housekeeper’s daughter. I felt that there was a story here and so that’s what captivated me. It was her herself and her presence and yet her silence. She didn’t even have a name.

Very little is actually known about the life of Dido Belle, who was born into slavery in the British West Indies and was the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of Sir John Lindsay, a white British naval officer, and Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman, found living in poverty by her father and entrusted to the care of his uncle, Lord Mansfield, originally William Murray, a crucial character in the story and in the history behind the film.  As a Scotsman, Murray had to work hard to become the most powerful judge in Britain.  Due to such scarce historical detail, Sagay was able to take artistic liberties in creating a fictionalized work that inserts Belle into a tumultuous discussion about the Zong massacre, Zong slave ship trial - HISTORY, where a central running thread of the film is an argument over the benefit or harm of the transatlantic slave trade, where an imminent ruling is expected by the court, specifically the Chief Justice, which could have historical ramifications, yet dressed in the romanticism and class system of a Jane Austen novel, where the primary family concern is marrying off young women to distinguished gentlemen who will maintain the prestigious family position of privilege.  Economics is the primary concern, not happiness or love, viewing the coming-out of young women into society much as they would a financial transaction, as women in marriage were viewed at the time as the exclusive property of men.  In the same way, the slave trade was viewed not only as the economic foundation of England, but as a means of expanding the British colonial empire, with little thought given to the heinous barbarity of the practice, as blacks were simply viewed as an inferior species.  In a society where rank, wealth, and family honor are everything, an unanswered question lurking beneath the lush exteriors of the film is just how wealth was amassed to live in such luxurious surroundings, complete with ornate clothing and jewelry, implying British colonial wealth was largely obtained through plantation holdings in the territories that ran on slave labor, suggesting the transatlantic slave trade is at the heart of the aristocratic nobility (used ironically) and the entire British costume drama genre, as those are the underlying circumstances creating such colossal inequities in wealth.  In 2006, The Church of England apologized for benefitting from the slave trade, Church apologises for benefiting from slave trade | UK news, following similar apologies by the late Pope John Paul II for the historic transgressions of the Roman Catholic church, including its anti-Semitism and the Inquisition, Pope says sorry for sins of church | World news - The Guardian.  Something of an indictment of British imperialism, though funded by the British Film Institute, an early theme develops when Lindsay drops off Belle under the care of his uncle, informing him “What’s right can never be impossible.”  Accordingly, Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) has to find her place in the aristocratic world of white privilege, raised together with her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray (Sara Gadon), who, after the death of her mother, was also entrusted into the care of her father’s uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and Lady Mansfield (Emily Watson).  While raised as equals, like sisters, outsiders held a more skeptical position, viewing Belle with racist derision and hostile contempt, seen more or less as a white charity case, but never one to take seriously.  An intersection of contrasting identities, black and white, slave and lady, exotic and English, Belle, in her own words, seems to have “no place to claim,” suggesting an impossibility of belonging, becoming a personal study of class, race, and gender oppression juxtaposed into a fictionalized moment in history.  This film was the coming-out party for British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, winning the British Independent Film Award (BIFA) in 2014 for Best Actress, seen a year later in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights (2014), winning an Emerging Artist Award during the Chicago Film Festival’s 18th Annual Black Perspectives Tribute in 2014, also seen in Peter Landesman’s Concussion (2015) and Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn (2019), yet none of those others deal with the complexities of this film.  However, perhaps due to the way the film was advertised, like a Masterpiece Theater presentation, it generated little research or academic study, overshadowed by the Academy Award winning acclaim for 12 Years a Slave and largely misunderstood at the time of release, as many critics just couldn’t fathom there could actually be depth in this format, yet it subversively generates sophisticated attitudes and ideas through a mainstream film, with a story that is a social critique, tackling controversial issues of slavery and rampant oppression through a historical costume drama.

British heritage is deeply intertwined with histories of colonization, slavery, and empire, yet there is a sense of amnesia when it comes to people of color, who are left out of any sense of belonging within an existing social fabric.  There are efforts of revisionist history, casting black actors in roles traditionally given to whites in an attempt to tell missing narratives of blacks during colonial history, like Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (Arnold) (2011), where Heathcliff is played by a black actor, yet this feels more like a painterly essay, as so much is non-verbal.  This film takes risks by utilizing a genre, the period costume drama, where black protagonists are nonexistent, offering a female perspective on being black in a white environment that elevates the feelings of the central character, placing viewers in her shoes, becoming a story about a voiceless character who develops a voice.  It wasn’t until the 1990’s that research about the painting restored Belle’s rightful identity, while historical accounts reveal some idea of how Belle was provided for when living at the Kenwood House under the care of Lord and Lady Mansfield, as she received a quarterly allowance that was less than her white cousin Elizabeth, yet more than what the servants received, while also too high in rank to dine with the servants and too low to dine with her own family when they have visitors.  These class customs are thoroughly confounding, with Belle reminding a visiting son of a clergyman that he is allowed to sit at the table before a lady of the house.  Indignant that this is a curt reminder of “his place,” she quickly reassures him, “No, it is a reminder of mine,” leaving her emotionally flustered.  Coming from a world that sees color before anything else, she finds herself living in a state of perpetually being in between, embodying living between two worlds, creating an endless psychological struggle.  The extravagance of the Kenwood House (shot largely on the grounds of the West Wycombe Estate in Buckinghamshire) is beyond impressive, a palatial grand manor nestled into a picturesque pastoral landscape, sumptuously filmed in ‘Scope by cinematographer Ben Smithard, one of the first UK films using the new 4k digital cameras, where the image is immaculate, recalling the opulent décors of Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON (1975), with refined production design by Simon Bowles and richly-colorful costumes by Anushia Nieradzik, while the sweeping musical score is written by British composer Rachel Portman, with Belle having her own leitmotif, Dido Elizabeth Belle - Belle Soundtrack - YouTube (1:53).  As Belle arrives as a young girl, walking along the lush hallways lined with sculptures and paintings, she can’t help but notice the paintings depicting blacks as the property of white masters, such as Charles Stanhope, Third Earl of Harrington, and a Servant (1782) (4,246 × 6,967 pixels) or Lady Elizabeth Keppel and a Servant (1762) (476 × 700 pixels), both by Sir Joshua Reynolds, with growing questions about her own role, suggesting the power of art in helping shape one’s personal identity.  These paintings have a way of reassuring whites of the benevolence of slavery, and help determine attitudes about the conditions of black lives, as they can be purchased, owned, or exchanged.  “Just like in life, we are no better in paintings,” she acknowledges at one point, as the art collection as a whole implicates the creation and maintenance of British slavery.  Yet somehow, Belle exists as a character conceived within a painting, much like Peter Webber’s GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING (1999), when a Vermeer painting comes to life, yet throughout the history of artistic representation, black women are rarely depicted as symbols of beauty, particularly in European or British art.  One need only recall the horrendous treatment of Sarah Baartman, paraded through the streets of Europe like a zoo animal, as depicted in Abdellatif Kechiche’s Black Venus (Vénus noire) (2010).  While something of a coming-of age film where Belle slowly elevates her own consciousness, it is in direct conflict with the times, so much of her journey is conducted in secrecy, outside of prying eyes.  What ignites her curiosity are the seemingly secret discussions surrounding the Zong affair, which is publicly written about, yet carefully concealed from Belle, supposedly protecting her from scandalous rumors and racist diatribe, yet in doing so it also hides her from the realities of people of color, so when a pastor’s son, John Davinier (Sam Reid), visits the home as an apprentice studying law under Lord Mansfield, his passionate abolitionist ideals and personal convictions draw the attention of Belle, who is herself curious and bright, yet woefully underinformed on the entire Zong affair, where she can’t help but sympathize with the mass killing of more than 140 enslaved Africans, thrown overboard supposedly to protect the ship’s crew, claiming a dwindling supply of water.

One of the curious aspects of the film is Belle’s reticence to have a portrait painting with Elizabeth, fearing she would appear like all the other paintings around the house in a subservient role, exhibiting a concern how she would be viewed in posterity.  Nonetheless, it is arranged for both to sit for an artist, despite her growing reservations.  Belle slowly learns that Lord Mansfield is the Chief Judge ruling on the Zong case, with the ship owners claiming insurance for damaged goods, or cargo lost in the form of slaves aboard a slave ship.  There is some question about the health of the slaves, as they were diseased from living in such tight quarters, undercutting their potential value at auction, actually worth more dead than alive, with rumors swirling about regarding what actually happened, John Explains the Zong Ship Case to Dido YouTube (2:30).  When it is discovered that Belle has been having open discussions with John, he is banished from the household and told never to see her again, but he is her only contact with news about the case, working tirelessly to provide evidence, so she continues to meet with him in secret.  Meanwhile, Belle’s father dies overseas, leaving her the sum of £2,000 a year, making her an heiress.  Elizabeth, by contrast, inherits nothing from her father, with a son from his new wife being named the sole heir.  As females in English high society, traditionally they would have to marry a gentleman who would equal their status or elevate it in order to continue their privileged way of life.  Sadly, with privilege and oppression intersecting, Lady Mansfield makes it clear that Belle is not to marry, believing no gentleman would marry her due to her race, while lower ranking men might only do so for her wealth, bringing ultimate shame and misfortune to the family, so she is asked to take the place of the perpetually despondent Aunt Mary (Penelope Wilton), a forlorn spinster whose mother prevented her from ever marrying, taking over the role of house manager, condemned to be hidden and shut away for the rest of her life, a fate she defiantly resists, another reminder of her low social and domestic position, continuing to be defined (or enslaved) by a patriarchal system that refuses to see her worth.  So arrangements are made for only Elizabeth to have her coming-out to society, meeting two brothers, James and Oliver Ashford (Tom Felton, aka Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, and James Norton), though Oliver immediately finds Belle intriguing, particularly after hearing her play a remarkable piano piece, Handel’s Suite No.9, Anatoly Vedernikov plays Handel Suite No 9 in G Minor YouTube (11:55), her talent towering over Elizabeth.  Miranda Richardson plays the scheming Lady Ashford, who along with James, the firstborn, feel repulsed by Belle’s race, yet may be willing to sacrifice their bigotry if they can get their hands on her money, with James courting Elizabeth until he realizes she has no money, dropping her flat afterwards, a recurring syndrome with other suitors as well that continually perplexes her.  It’s actually Belle that attracts attention, becoming engaged with Oliver, but she soon realizes the error of her ways, used only for money, becoming glaringly apparent when James brazenly makes racist and misogynistic insults before manhandling her in public at a picnic on the banks of a river, with Elizabeth, Lady Ashford, and many others present, showing no restraint or remorse, claiming she would only bring disgrace to the family, yet when she angrily cuts off the engagement, Lady Ashford haughtily declares she should be so lucky to marry into her family. This must be viewed as a time when female black slaves were routinely raped and defiled by white attackers, as there were very few white women in the West Indies, viewed by the men as perfectly acceptable behavior, while in Britain, white heritage gave them the right, believing blacks were naturally inferior and debauched.  Belle even has a mirror scene where she begins to pinch and pull her skin with self-hatred, rubbing the heal of her palm across her face and forehead, certainly an uncommon experience in any movie genre, but very fitting here to reflect her own harrowing issues with identity, having to deal with one indignity after another.  The history of violence against women is long and arduous, yet when Belle attempts to warn Elizabeth, she fumes with jealously, refusing to believe a gentleman like James would place his hands on her.  Only afterwards does Elizabeth come to understand her lower social standing, as it’s all about monetary inheritance, and she has none.  Belle is then openly surprised that she and Elizabeth are viewed on equal terms in the final portrait, giving her some claim to finally having a place, yet this sense continually eludes her.     

At a key moment in the film, Lord Mansfield asks Belle what book she is reading, it turns out to be The Dying Negro: A Poetical Epistle, written by Thomas Day, a British abolitionist, that she says “speaks of a slave who agrees to marry an English lady; a voice for people, people like my mother, who do not have one.”  Inquiring whether she finds herself in such writing, Belle can only answer, “I do not know that I find myself anywhere.”  Reference to this poem published in 1773 adds weight and depth to the film.  Living inside a gargantuan estate, a symbol of white, patriarchal power and authority, where it’s easy to see how easily one can be erased from history, one senses that Belle questions her own subjective existence within that overpowering dominion.  Officially known as Gregson v. Gilbert (1783), while also mixing in rulings from Somerset v. Stewart (1772), everything that happens in the film points to a final resolution of the Zong case, much like Spencer Tracy in INHERIT THE WIND (1960) or Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), two films instilling generational values from historic court rulings, with bits and pieces of intensely private consultation between Belle and John that borders on romanticism, where an exchange of common ideas substitutes for matters of the heart.  When Lord Mansfield finally renders his decision in open court, Belle is like a giddy little kid, running to the upper balcony, just like Scout peering out at her father in Mockingbird, watching the final verdict being rendered.  One look around the courtroom reveals a noticeable lack of black presence.  Belle stole the most damning evidence from her uncle’s office, incriminating evidence that may have changed the course of history, which could be viewed as an act of rebellious insurrection in support of those that lost their lives, a document in Mansfield’s own handwriting, revealing that the Zong slave ship sailed past eight ports where they could have taken on provisions before jettisoning their human cargo, suggesting their rationale of water deprivation was a fraudulent cover-up for their murderous crime.  The lost lives she attempts to save recall the faint memory of her mother, as the details of her life are lost to Belle, becoming part of a collective consciousness of unnamed black lives, all viewed by a larger white society as humanly insignificant.  The central question running through the entire film questions the morality of putting a monetary price on human life.  While this is strictly a fictional version, as a woman of color, the verdict has enormous implications surrounding her growing self-awareness and her own idea of freedom, going through a transformative metamorphosis where she is finally in charge of her own life.  And while her experience cannot be compared to that of a chained slave whose sole purpose, as viewed by a white majority, can be traced to an object sold in a market place, what it does instead is elevate Belle’s existential worth to an equal footing to that of a white man, John Davinier, whose moral convictions initially drew her to him, yet he’s idealized as a paragon of virtue, believing in a human cause that does not abandon the unempowered or voiceless, declaring “Laws that allow us to diminish the humanity of anybody are not laws.  They are the frameworks for crime.”  Unlike the Ashfords, their developing intimacy is always honest and respectful, much to the surprise of Lord Mansfield, who initially believed Davinier’s lower status would only disgrace his niece, where in this case the courtroom outcome helps prefigure the social conditions necessary for a happy marital union.  The decision snowballed into the outlaw of the slave trade in England, which was abolished throughout the entire British empire in 1807.  Coming from the most disadvantaged background imaginable, Belle had to overcome obstacles to leave her mark in the world, challenging us to rethink what we know about Britain’s past, perhaps drawing inspiration from women like her.  Situated somewhere between the women’s filmmaking of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) and Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993), this film reexamines national history and memory through race and colonialism, creating a place where the personal, the political, and the historical are inextricably linked, perhaps showing a way to review the past, literally cracking open a door in rewriting a greater and more inclusive examination of history, opening up new spaces to explore.      

Postscript

Paula Byrne wrote a slim companion book to the film in 2014 entitled Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice, containing a slight yet factual account of Belle’s life, where so little is authoritatively known, providing more historical detail, while also focusing on other people of color from the time period, much more about Lord Mansfield, and the court cases that helped advance the British abolition movement.