The busy woman finally have time to write about movies. Our contributor, Tegar, joins us too with the genre he loves, horror. While I decided to check out Belle (2013) as I loved Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s performance in Beyond The Lights (2014). Here they are :
It Follows (2014)
IMDB Summary : A young woman is followed by an unknown supernatural force after getting involved in a sexual encounter.
The menu in this movie can be called horror or thriller, but sorry they didn’t serve cutted or grilled meat, as David Robert Mitchell serves horror for vegetarians.
Even without essential elements in horror genre, this movie guaranteed can make you ten times threatened, ten times drives you to the bathroom, ten times want to leave your seat, but if you love tension you’ll left with a smile on your face. The ’70s-’80s horror taste this movie brought, the fascinating sound editing, the colors and the look, and also its own quite characteristic.
As the intro, they serve you with a panic woman running in in the middle of the residential road. It feels like nothing chased her, but something drive her to run. Then suddenly the scene jumped to her taking a car to a beach and sit frustratedly and it jumped again to her already being a corpse in an usual position. What could happen? It was enough as the ‘appetizer’ where David Robert Mitchell would take you to the main dish.
The story moves to the main character, Jay (Maika Monroe), a blondie, the typical victims in horror movies. She’s having her first date with new boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary) until they are having intercourse. But unlike regular sex, Hugh tells her that he passes down a ‘curse’ and Jay have to run from a mysterious thing that will come to kill her. Unfortunately, nobody can see this ‘curse’ with their bare eyes. She can be free from this curse if she have an intercourse with another person, with the condition that this person can escape from the curse itself.
This story that take set in the Detroit suburban is dense with the ’70s-’80s nuance, though it wasn’t too obvious when the event take place. The characters in the movie still watches black and white TV screen and the furnitures felt like they were in that decade. Clearly, they wanted a bit of nostalgic horror mixed to the story as the atmosphere.
Couple of long shots will questioned you, as sometimes we see someone in the frame and then they disappear. These long shots contained zoom ins, quiet atmosphere, minimum music which makes us concentrated to the character. There’s morale battle between action and consequences, the quietness that felt like forever, all in one.
Don’t get trapped though, problems have solutions. Tighten your nerve, review everything you believe in and not everything you see is real. Good luck on eating the vegetarian menu for horror lovers.
Score :
review by Tegar Errisaputra
Belle (2013)
IMDB Summary : The mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral is raised by her aristocratic great-uncle in 18th century England.
There’s something so charming about independent woman in period dramas, like Pride & Prejudice and recent movie I watched, Belle. Inspired by a painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray, which appeared in the movie, Belle is about Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the life of an illegitimate mixed-race daughter of Captain Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode), a British Royal Navy officer. Sir John Lindsay takes Belle to uncle William Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) after her mother died for him to take care of her, as he must go on for his duty.
Mansfield and his wife Lady Elizabeth Mansfield (Emily Watson), and the rest of his residence takes care of Belle since child almost like her own daughter, Lady Elizabeth Murray (Sarah Gadon). They accepted Belle despite the contradiction of colored people image and Lord Mansfield title as the judge.
Unfortunately for Belle, her father Sir John Lindsay died on his duty, but he left her fortune and makes her a heiress. Her uncle Mansfield set her daughter and Belle their own painting, but it makes Belle worried as she doesn’t want to be portrayed as the painting of colored man in the estate she saw since child.
When Uncle Mansfield takes an apprentice of a law student, which is the vicar’s son, John Davinier (Sam Reid), Belle felt disliked to him as the man shows a tad impoliteness from their first meeting. John recognized a slight unusual treatment from the Mansfield family to Belle, as she couldn’t join formal dining whenever a guest visits. John also have deep concern about the Zong massacre, how colored men slaves gets killed, thrown overboard by the captain of slave-ship who claim for insurance. Belle couldn’t help but seeking information about this, and set aside her dislikeness she gets it eventually from John, who felt sympathy for her.
As the story goes, Belle feels torn to her uncle, a man who takes her like her own father but as a judge could defend his own race. Belle also faced the facts that her colored looks can both resist and appeal men, and her status as a heiress and fortune could blind husband candidates. With the Zong massacre gets her closer to John Davinier, his passion to defend colored men makes Belle fall for him but she already agrees to marry another man.
Inspired by the painting of Belle and her cousin, the movie does have all the seasoning to keep female audience in their seat; the independent woman element and the ‘icy’ but romantic story. It has a strong message about human rights in the very early history of colored people. At some point she wishes to have the same skin color, in the scene where she tried to tore her face skin in front of her mirror. She is accepted but unaccepted in her own home. Her powerful Uncle Mansfield doesn’t have any choice but to accept her and treated her like her own daughter, even more when Belle showed her sharp mind.
Belle have a fortunate fate compared to any colored people back then; with her treated equally (but with some exceptions), her heiress status and her beauty managed to attract men. But still, she can’t escape the reality that her other race faced a tormented life.
Compared to 12 Years a Slave (2013) and perhaps other movies about the movement of colored people, Belle has minimum showing of how tortured her own kind is, because of her angle as heiress and fortunate life. It seems for me, there should be just a bit of the contrast life of her and the slaves. In the movie, the only contrast was her colored housemaid and her Uncle treated the maid well. This perhaps is the same case like The Butler (2013) who live in a privilege life since they live close to the white men.
But it is enough to blend with Belle and John Davinier’s romance, and her path to find a good man to be her husband. It showed how back then the society still find spouse candidate over status and wealthy, in the case of Belle’s cousin, Elizabeth who did not received anything if she marries a man. Tom Felton cast as James who almost marry Elizabeth but hesitant knowing this reality, but on the contrary his own brother propose marriage to Belle.
Even though the whole story has a neat plot and drama, it felt like a mini-TV series. Perhaps because of the shots and sometimes the dramatization. Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s expressive eyes helps not making the atmosphere cold and structured, as they were back then. Sam Reid was perfectly cast as John Davinier, the passionate law student who says what he thinks, he’s a perfect male lead in romance as well with his cold exterior.
To summon it all, Belle is a good drama and significant for the justice of colored human rights. It’s a case where racist doesn’t exist when there’s no hatred and judgment over your skin color. Justice comes from your own home.
Score :
