Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 8:06 pm 
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Kenya (Sanaa Lathan) is an African-American aristocrat. She came out at the cotillion; her father is chief of neurosurgery at a big hospital. She’s on the verge of being made partner at a big financial firm and she’s a Wharton School graduate, Phi Beta Kappa – or something like that – her mother can’t get her firm’s name quite right so we don’t need to know all the details. She’s perfect, that’s for sure. Her klatsch of support-girls are all young black women as accomplished and articulate and bright as she is – but less uptight.

When Kenya resorts to a blind Internet date, a big friendly blond hunk shows up full of confidence and interest, and she terminates the date within minutes. She prefers black men. But really, we realize, she’s just afraid. Circumstances bring Brian (Simon Baker) back. He turns out to have been the landscaper who did the spectacular garden for a friend who has a housewarming, and Kenya’s just bought a house that needs garden design. She asks, and Brian is produced.

Kenya resists, but Brian persists, and before long he’s working magic on her yard. He’d like to work magic closer by, but it takes a while. We learn that Kenya isn’t so perfect. She’s uptight – we knew that. She’s also terrified of spiders and other creepy crawly things and she’s asthmatic and had a sheltered childhood. Brian goes nowhere without his golden retriever, and she starts to pet it. He gives her a personalized copy of Charlotte’s Web. Finally he ambushes her and drags her on a hike in the southern California hills. A sudden rain, a hug, a kiss, and the relationship begins.

A bumptious brother who says he’s “the help” and boyfriends of girlfriends and even Kenya’s parents are not at all friendly to Brian at first. Brian manfully weathers these attacks and sits at a club where a black comedienne mocks white men. He loves Kenya for what she is and urges her to let go and maybe be a little more black – take her weave out and show her natural hair, give up the beige color scheme and paint her rooms with some color. The girlfriends tell her they can see she’s having fun. But family objections remain, and her brother sets her up with a highly eligible black bachelor who’s new in town. Once he’s in the wings, waiting for his chance, Brian and Kenya have a fight. One evening in the supermarket he’s tired and begs her to stop talking about her problems with race. Let’s not talk about black and white just for tonight, he asks. Oh, no, that’s not how it works, she says. You can forget about being white, because everybody around you is, but being black means never being able to forget it. This argument leads them to split up and Kenya begins dating the black man.

The trouble is, super-eligible, high-achieving, nice, and approved of by the family though the African-American bachelor may be, the magic isn’t there for Kenya and she ends the dating. After getting drunk at a cotillion, whose all-black snobbism infuriates her now, and having a heart-to-heart with her now understanding dad (Earl Billings), Kenya runs out to Brian – in the rain again – and declares her love. Despite having briefly returned to an old (white) girlfriend, Brian immediately declares that her love is returned, and before you can eat your last piece of popcorn, it’s wedding time.

Though this may sound pretty obvious, and Something New isn’t notable for its subtlety, this is in some ways a great movie, and in other ways a very interesting one. Kenya is a convincing African–American princess whose uptightness and over-intensity are conveyed in a committed, nuanced performance by Sanaa Lathan. Brian, played by Simon Baker, whose looks betray his Australian origins pretty unmistakably, is certainly a loading of the dice for the film. No white man could be hunkier or more sincere and appealing. His character is the ultimate natural man, a lover of nature with a keen artistic sense, who’s smart enough to have worked for a while as an advertising copy writer – and to have quit. Brian helps Kenya get her groove back. There's no question about the fact that this relationship isn't going to be easy, because of the social pressures and the possiblity of failures of empaqthy we glimpsed in the supermarket, but it's also clear that sometimes love crosses boundaries as distinct as black and white in the USA, bringing together two great people, regardless of race. That's a romantic notion, but one whose social details and positive possibilities this movie clear-sightedly delineates.

This is a picture of upperclass African-Americans, a group we don’t get to see very often. It’s a pity the screenplay is so focused some subtleties are forgotten -- for instance, the fact that some of the prejudice against Kenya at work is gender-based rather than racial. Anyway, she makes partner and her toughness as an evaluator of potential clients is richly rewarded – by her white CEO. The larger value of the movie remains: it's a frank and detailed affirmation both of the inherent racism of American life and of possibilities of coming together. Latham’s performance is fine and so is just about everybody else’s. The film’s too simplistic in places but sometimes that’s necessary to make its points. In this country, about race, we’re still in elementary school sometimes.

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


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