Guitarlo

It starts with a jolt. Arlo Hennings finds himself with a SWAT trooper’s jack boot on his back before getting pulled to his feet by his hair. From there, Hennings takes us on a wild ride of music, political activities, philosophical exploration, and cultural awareness from Woodstock to South Africa to Minneapolis to Jakarta and all points in between.

Interwoven amidst all of that, like the strands of Hennings’ own DNA, is the love that motivates, enlightens, and sustains him. In the end, it is a love story; it is not a tale of romance—although that is certainly present—but it is a grand saga of human love for humanity in all its manifestations.

I confess. I expected to read about music experience and expertise, rage and revolution, and be taken on a tell-all exposé of life among the radicals. The most radical experience, however, was the encounter of Hennings’ love.

The frustration of the music industry is told in all its hair-pulling anguish. The rewards, Hennings attests, far outweighs the disappointment. But his artistry is not limited to music and musicianship, Hennings is a poet and a prophet, speaking and writing of the world as it is and how it should be, could be.

The tragedies weigh heavily, but the ineffable joy lifts all burdens. His humor is now poignant, now pointed, now powerful, now playful.

It is spiritual and spirited and never, not once, spiteful.
​
Guitarlo is nothing less than the Hero’s Quest

The film opens with a barrage against any sensible person’s humanity. “How many of ya’ll raw n-----s know how to cut cane?” the slave supervisor asks the men lined up for work. I cannot use the word they used to describe the enslaved men and I will not call the brutal white supervisor “master” though he demanded it. The word “raw” was used to describe one who was untrained in certain field work--usually describing a person who was recently purchased from the slave brokers. It is the language that first assaults the viewer. The visual horrors soon follow in increasing intensity and frequency and monstrosity.

There are great actors who appear in critical moments. Their appearances are often short but their talents make their moments on-screen intense and often upsetting. What I mean is: they are convincing.    

Chiwetel Ejiofor (Amistad, Othello)  is the brilliant British actor who plays Solomon Northrup, the main character and author of the slave narrative 12 Years a Slave which recounts his 12 years on Louisiana plantations. The book was published in 1853 and sold 30,000 in the initial runs. The book then fell into obscurity for about 100 years until rediscovered by two scholars from Louisiana State University who had the book republished in 1968.
_

Solomon Northrup was a free man whose father had been freed by Henry B. Northrup of New York. Solomon himself was a trained carpenter and violinist. It was his skill with a violin that brought him to the attention of two circus men. These men recruited Solomon to briefly join them on the circus trip from New York to Washington, DC. Solomon’s wife and two children were gone and would not be returning for several weeks, so he took the opportunity for a brief engagement with the traveling circus.

When they reached Washington, however, he was drugged and sold into slavery across the Potomac in Virginia, a slave-holding state in 1841. In the holding-pen, he protests his status as a free man and his captor beats him relentlessly, even splintering the board across Solomon’s back. Director Steve McQueen has only given a portend of the nightmare to come.

Paul Giamatti portrays the slave-broker with the gruesomely ironic name of “Freeman.” Giamatti is too accomplished an actor to not play the part with intensity. The slaves are lined up for identification. When Freeman calls out the name “Platt,” Solomon does not answer. He approaches Solomon and says that he must be "Platt." When Solomon answers that his name is Solomon Northrup, Freeman slaps Solomon and tells him that his name is “Platt.”

Solomon is bought by William Ford (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) to work on a cotton plantation. When Ford buys Solomon he also buys a woman who has two children. The woman is bought but the children are not.

At Ford’s plantation, one of the overseers tries to kill Solomon, leaving him hanging. Solomon’s toes reach the ground just enough to support him and thus save him from strangulation. Even Ford, however, is afraid of the repercussions of accusing a free white man and he sells Solomon to Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), a man of incredible cruelty. Fassbender is hideously convincing in his violence.

Epps reads from the Bible to justify his mistreatment of the slaves. Throughout the film McQueen uses scripture in juxtaposition for the slaves and the oppressors; an exhortation for comfort for the one and justification for brutality for the other.

The lengths to which the slaves must go to survive is searing and de-humanizing. Alfre Woodard plays Mistress Shaw who was already a slave but had to sell herself again in order to gain the interest and “affection” of the slave-owner named Shaw. If not an escape from slavery, it is at least an escape from the fields and the brutality.   

It is a young woman named Patsey, however, who breaks your heart. She is portrayed by the charming Lupita Nyong’o in her first film role and she is magnificent. She is so delicate, so fragile and it makes the brutality so much worse.
_

Patsey is hated by Epps’ wife and is frequently the object of Epps’ lust. Even in the midst of such horror, she manages to cling to some hidden joy. Until…

Late one night, Epps rapes the sweet young woman. After his departure, she goes to Epps and begs for him to drown her which Epps, of course, cannot do. Her pleading and her cry for the mercy of death are too much to bear. And it only gets worse.

In one of the most broadcast and most memorable scenes of the movie, Patsey has gone to visit the Shaw plantation where she received a gift of a small bit of soap. She tells Epps that she smells so bad that she makes herself gag and she only wanted the feeling of being clean; she wanted some small shred of dignity and even that is denied her.    

She is secured to the whipping post and Epps orders Solomon to lash her with the whip. She tells Solomon that she would rather it be from him than from Epps but Solomon cannot whip her as ferociously as Epps demands. Epps seizes the whip from him.

Even the music, however, is not enough for a man who once knew freedom and now finds himself in the inhumanity of slavery. The musical score for the movie was composed by Hans Zimmer. Such emotion and such imagery in sound! And that fails, too.

As brutal as was the depiction of Patsey’s beating, as infuriating as was the attempted-hanging of Solomon, the most-gripping scene was one of stillness. The music has ceased and there is no speaking. The camera focuses on Solomon’s face as he looks down and to the viewer’s left. Using the “rule of thirds,” McQueen shows Solomon’s face as only filled the left one-third of the screen while behind him is only emptiness. He has lost himself. Then the most unbearable moment is when Solomon looks directly at the camera.

Who could withstand that gaze? Who could not be drawn into that fellowship of agony? How could I not be ashamed of my own skin color? And I am white.

The movie did not end there. But I have found myself unable to escape Solomon’s gaze. Even though Solomon was rescued and even though he found his way home and to freedom, my heart remained with Patsey and the 3,200,000 who remained in chains.

Friday, August 16, saw the nationwide opening of Lee Daniel’s The Butler. The movie requires multiple viewings due to the appearance of so many stars, both expected and unexpected. The film lists Forrest Whittaker and Oprah Winfrey in the lead roles and Cuba Gooding Jr. and rocker-turned-actor Lenny Kravitz in the supporting roles.

The viewer finds oneself repeatedly asking “Is that___?” or exclaiming “Oh, wow! That’s ___!” and it happens right from the beginning scenes. Mariah Carey appears (and disappears) early on to be followed in rapid succession by (Oh, wow! That’s…) Vanessa Redgrave, (Hey! That’s Linc from the Mod Squad!) Clarence Williams III, Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding Jr., Lenny Kravitz, Terrence Howard, (Are you kidding me? He’s…) Robin Williams as Eisenhower, John Cusack as Nixon, James Marsden as JFK, Live Schreiber as LBJ, and Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda as Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

A quick word of advice before viewing: don’t get caught up in the many, many actors and how much they do or do not look like the figures they are portraying. Truth be told, none of them look like the characters, but they do feel like them.

The story itself is an amazing portrayal of a man of integrity “keeping his place” in the face of unspeakable bigotry and stupidity. Well, let’s just go ahead and call it what it is, evil. While it is based on the life of Eugene Allen (the movie character is called Cecil Gaines), who served eight administrations in the White House, the story is largely fictional in order to tell a much wider story.

It is the story of America’s struggles with itself in the face of racism and its twin offspring—fear and hatred. From the marches in Selma, Alabama to the assault on the “Freedom Riders” and the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the African-American community was battered and bloodied but heroically maintained dignity, integrity and courage and continually “turned the other cheek.”

After the anger at seeing the murder of those noble non-violent civil rights leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X (who had abandoned the “by any means necessary” ideology), it surely must have seemed that violent struggle was the only option for bringing success in the cause. Some, in fact, did turn to a more violent response in the form of Black Power as espoused by the Black Panther movement. It was a movement born of frustration and disappointment. If equality would not be granted in a capitalist democracy, then a forced-equality of Marxist social theory was the next step.

It is this element of the movie that is richly displayed in the character of Cecil’s oldest son Louis as played by the talented and believable David Oyelowo. Oyelowo reveals the struggle for adulthood within the family and for personhood within an unjust society. His father Cecil is caught in the struggle between an honorable and trustworthy life of servant-hood versus the drive for equality in a world of bigotry even in the highest realms of power. Louis very well may be the most compelling character in the whole story.

Oprah Winfrey is convincing in her role as a wife and mother caught in the struggle between husband and son as well as her own fight with alcoholism and infidelity.

Lee Daniels’ vision and his attention to historical detail are impressive and inspiring. Not only does he show the determined resistance of the African-American fighters for equal rights but he also shows the equally indignant and determined white resisters who suffer the same humiliation alongside their African-American brothers and sisters. In one scene, Daniels’ shows the black and white protestors seated together at a Woolworth’s lunch counter assigned for “Whites only” and both are treated with equal vitriol and humiliation.  Scenes like this, Lenny Kravitz says, are “hard to watch but important to remember.” Indeed the imagery of snarling dogs and fire-hoses, white-hooded Klansmen and Molotov cocktails, and the lynchings and the lynchings and the lynchings are unbearable. Yet, we must not forget even to “white America’s” shame.

The support or antagonism of various presidents are also shown through anguishing snapshots throughout Mr. Gaines’ career—from Eisenhower dispatching federal troops to Little Rock in 1957 to Reagan’s refusal to enact sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid government. We see JFK doing the right thing for the right reason, LBJ doing the right thing for the wrong reason and Nixon just doing wrong.

What Lee Daniels’ The Butler truly reveals to us is that African-American history is one and the same with American history; that “white history” and “black history” are twin strands of the double-helix that shapes our national DNA. The struggles for black identity are face to face with the trials for white identity. We are defined in the reflection we see in each other’s eyes.

In Lee Daniels’ vision, we can only see ourselves and each other clearly through honesty and self-examination.




This site and the material contained herein is protected by copyright and trademark laws under U.S. and International law. No part may be copied without written permission of the author.
© copyright 2011-2013. Travis Rogers, Jr. All rights reserved.