JILLIAN ESTELL AND KEVIN COSTNER IN BLACK OR WHITE

Costner's intelligent treatment of race issues lifts a conventional film

In Mike Binder's Black or White Kevin Costner plays Elliot Anderson, a prosperous middle-aged white lawyer living in Santa Monica with a young biracial granddaughter named Eloise (Jillian Estell) who lives with him. Elliot must fight for custody of Eliose against her black grandmother Rowena Jeffers (Octavia Spencer) after his wife dies in a car accident. In the mix is Reggie (André Holland), Eloise's wayward father, a crack addict, and Jeremiah, a much more successful son of Rowena who's a highpowered lawyer.

The ordinary trappings of Mike Bender's Black or White belie its intelligent approach to race issues. It avoids stereotypes and extremes, though in its focus on a custody trial it assumes the nature of a parable. At the center of the movie is a fine performance by Costner that is disarmingly low-keyed and free of vanity. Make no mistake, this is not an art movie or an artistic one. Its Terrence Blanchard music has been objected to by AV Club's A.A. Dowd as "maudlin tinkle that never lets up." He seems to have missed the poetic trombone sounds that elevate some conventional L.A. landscape shots; but the cinematography, locations, and decor are pretty generic. Still, the content of this movie is valuable despite weaknesses of style.

Elliot has a drinking problem that grew worse some years ago when his daughter died in childbirth having Eloise, and now when his wife dies he drinks nearly non-stop. But he juggles his drinking with taking good care of Eloise. He learns how to comb out her kinky hair and tie a ribbon around it and insist Eloise clean her teeth with the same vehemence his late wife used. He drives her to her elite private school. He gets help from a nerdy, highly accomplished young African, Duvan Araga (Mpho Koaho) who tutors both Eloise and him and begins to be his driver. Duvan has lost most of his family in violent conflict, yet speaks eight languages and has published numerous papers on scholarly subjects. He's a different kind of black guy from either the messed-up Reggie or the aggressively corporate Jeremiah, a valid and important addition to the story, though the comedy element Duvan adds is very thin.

Rowena initiates a custody battle over Eloise because Elliot shields the biracial child from her black relatives, mainly because he does not Reggie to get his hands on her. After the custody trial begins with a black female judge (Paula Newsome) who looks like a young Oprah, Eloise is forced to see court-appointed psychologists who awaken in her a longing to see her father. When Reggie appears, he says he's been clean for some time and getting his life together in Seattle. But he doesn't seem ready to assume any responsibility, including that of being a father.

While the rather lost Reggie and the super-achiever Jeremiah, as well as earth-mother and entrepreneur Rowena, matriarch over a family of many seemingly lively, happy children L.A.'s inner city, all represent varieties of African American and Duvan represents a kind of African African, Elliot in his understated way represents all these. He has nearly as much of a substance abuse problem as Reggie, but he's as successful as Jeremiah, and he is prepared to be a loving parent to Eloise like Rowena. When he talks about race, Elliot is realistic and undramatic.

It is not hip to speak well of this film, as its Metacritc rating of 47 makes clear. It takes a maverick or an untouchable to do so. In a favorable review of Black and White the perennially contrarian black film critic Armond White, writing in the conservative National Review (that and the gay Out are his weekly venues now) knowledgeably praises this film. White, who makes up his own criteria, calls it "sentimental in a good way," and cites Michael Jackson's uplifting song "Black or White," which says "I’m not gonna spend my life being a color!" Binder's film, White says, "poses several questions: First about family, then character, then social values, and lastly about race. That may seem like backward priorities, given the way race has recently dominated film culture (race keeps coming up, always as a controversy). But the order of the film’s interests suggests Costner’s integrity regarding showbiz moralizing." He adds that the film's "emphasizing character over easily exploitable social and racial topics is a sign of Costner and Binder’s sense of decency." We can praise this film in the same terms we praise the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, like their recent Two Days, One Night. A conventional Hollywood movie like this one won't come in for the Cannes awards and international cachet accorded the Belgian brothers. In Variety Scott Foundas called Binder and Costner's film "disappointingly dull." They're not sacrosanct like the Dardennes, nor do they achieve the Dardennes' elegant simplicity of style. But everyone admits that this is a fine effort by Costner. Olivia Spencer and André Holland also turn in good performances, though the excellent Anthony Mackie is rather wasted here.

In a speech when being cross examined by Jeremiah at the custody trial Elliot answers the charge that he is racist. He acknowledges that when he sees someone black he thinks first of their race, as blacks who see him think first that he is white. But what counts, he says, is not what he thinks first, but what he thinks second, third, and fourth.

Obviously, Black or White's trial is neither realistic nor cynical. It's not about clever legal tricks or strategically revealed facts, but about everybody acknowledging the situation, yet finding reconciliation in that, as in a classic Shakespearean comedy. Needless to say this isn't Shakespeare (or the Dardennes), it's not that either. Rex Reed is surely right in saying (somewhat tautologically) that "a better director would have made a better film." But Armond White is right in praising this film's intelligent stances on race -- which conventional white critics like Stephen Holden and Scott Foundas overlook, and allowing its stylistic conventionality a pass. Content matters.

Black or White, 121 mins., debuted at Toronto September 2014 and showed at a few other festivals. US theatrical release 30 January 2015.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.