Oprah's opus

>> Jonathan Demme directs the talk-show queen in Beloved

by MATTHEW HAYS

If there's one certainty about the new film Beloved, it's that it won't suffer any lack of publicity.

That's its star, U.S. talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, on the cover of Time magazine. And that's influential movie critic Richard Corliss gushing over the film (and Oprah), raving about the close-to-three-hour-long big-screen adaptation of the bestselling Pulitzer-Prize-winning Toni Morrison novel. The logical extension of her wildly successful book club, Beloved is the end result of Oprah's long struggle to have the book brought to the big screen--with herself in the lead role. Beloved, she told Corliss, would be like her Schindler's List.

It's an admirable and ambitious project. Morrison's book effectively evoked the pain and suffering caused by slavery; based loosely on a true story, the film's protagonist (played by Oprah) murders her own child rather than allow her to be taken to the same plantation Oprah escaped from years earlier. Much of the film is told in flashback, as Oprah is haunted by the ghosts of her past. Danny Glover, who escaped from the same plantation, arrives to court his old flame. Things appear to be improving for our heroine, but the household is turned on its head when a sickly girl, Beloved, arrives, and Oprah takes her under her wing.

Director Jonathan Demme--certainly no slouch--has crafted an eerie, elegiac film. But Beloved buckles under its hefty screen time; the film feels like it could desperately use a nip and a tuck (to the tune of 30 more minutes left on the cutting-room floor) from the able hand of an editor. There is the added, alarming sense that pervades the film--that of a screenwriter desperately attempting to hit all the same bases that were approached in the book. One can almost feel the filmmakers checking off the boxes on their list: moment captured, move on to the next.

Obviously, this is not a good thing. And the sense of lost opportunity is even greater when one considers the valiant efforts of virtually everyone involved. Oprah delivers a competent, if not remarkable, performance. Glover, as always, is exceptional. Thandie Newton's Beloved is an astounding character study. And Demme's directorial hand can be felt, always a good thing from such a secure and confident filmmaker. But the problems are grave for this admirable effort at illustrating the longstanding horrors of slavery. As with Demme's meditation on AIDS, Philadelphia, the film's aspirations are commendable but unmet.

Beloved opens Friday, October 16