Black History Month: Looking Back at "The Brother From Another Planet"

As February is Black History Month, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some screen projects that have been overlooked, unsung, or considered also-rans in the canon of African America film.

Brother From Another Planet (1984)
Written, Directed and Edited by John Sayles
Starring Joe Morton

This film is a personal favorite of mine. Eight years after David Bowie was The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the very same year that Jeff Bridges portrayed an alien who just wants to get home in Starman, Joe Morton made his breakout performance in this John Sayles indie as a dreadlocked, goodhearted alien who crashlands on New York's Ellis Island and tries to understand what earthlings are all about. His journey is complicated by the fact that he is mute and can hear the voices of humans embedded in the objects they used. He appears mostly human, but his three-toed feet -- not to mention his extra-sensory perceptions -- mark him as different.

He manages to cross the Hudson and arrive at 125th Street in Harlem, where his skintone helps him blend in. But soon he is assaulted by the sounds of multiple languages, hip-hop, salsa, and video games, and confronted by images of a crucified Jesus, street crime, and drug use. Living by his wits and an alien ability to heal wounds and manipulate machinery, the Brother is helped by a local social worker (Tom Wright) and winds up with a job and a place to live with a chatty single mother (Caroline Aaron) and her young biracial son.

The brilliance of this film is that we see the complete absurdity, violence, variety, vice and mayhem of contemporary life through his eyes. What's more, in the presence of a man who doesn't speak, nearly every person he runs across becomes a virtual motormouth, giving sway to their beliefs, fears, prejudices, memories, and hopes as he listens, wide-eyed and agog.

As it turns out, the Brother is a fugitive from his planet's justice, and when white bounty hunters in black arrive (played by David Strathairn and Sayles himself) it becomes clear that on his planet, he was held as a slave.

Perhaps best known today as "Papa Pope" on TV's Scandal, Joe Morton is in nearly every scene and he is absolutely brilliant. His eyes say everything about the predicament he finds himself in, and his physicality communicates the sensory discomfort and surprise of being in unfamiliar surroundings.

He is surrounded by an ace troupe of reliable stage and screen character actors, including Broadway and recording legend Dee Dee Bridgewater as a local singer who turns on her love light; Carl Gordon (known as Charles Dutton's father on '90s sitcom Roc) as a romantic rival; busy character actor Bill Cobbs (seen on Greenleaf) as a barroom philosopher; funnyman Leonard Jackson (Carwash, Boomerang, The Color Purple) as another barroom pal; Caroline Aaron, who's appeared in dozens of films and plays the mother of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel; and Tom Wright, a stalwart from dozens of TV shows (including Punch from Ray Donovan) as a helpful social worker. Even Josh Mostel shows up for two minutes as a Casio keyboard vendor.

Sayles has made a career of making independent movies that look at the impact of race, sex, and class on the intersected lives of community members (his 1996 film about a Texas border town Lone Star and a southern Florida town in 2002's Sunshine State are other personal favorites). He also adds clever references to other films, including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ("we don't need no stinkin' badges!"), the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and other films. Here Sayles makes us consider just what we have wrought as a society.

While we have a long way to go in terms of a truly harmonious planet, freedom from bondage on Earth -- strange as it is -- looks like Heaven to this Brother.

Black History Month: Looking Back at "Paris Blues"

As February is Black History Month, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some films featuring African American actors and African American stories that have been overlooked, unsung, or also rans in the pantheon of favorite or important films about us.

Paris Blues (1961).
Directed by Martin Ritt
Starring Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodward, Diahann Carroll

A product of the post-civil rights sensibility, Paris Blues has to take place across the water to show us how we can really all get along.

The film is about two expatriate American jazz musicians, trombonist Ram Bowen (Paul Newman) who leads his own combo, and his saxophonist Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier), who live in sophisticated, freewheeling, bohemian Paris. The pair sketch out new compositions by day and hold court nightly as the main attraction in a fashionable jazz club into the wee hours. What are they performing? Music by Duke Ellington, naturally, though it is credited to the Ram Bowen group.

Ram initially meets two pretty American tourists, Lillian (Joanne Woodward) and Connie (Diahann Carroll), when he goes to meet the train bringing in noted jazz player Wild Man Miller (played by Louis Armstrong) who will sit in with Ram (as if the great Armstrong could play second fiddle to anyone on a bandstand). After a flirtation with Connie, who introduces him to Lillian, Ram invites the ladies to show up at his gig, which they do.

After some initial bad behavior and crossed signals, romance ensues along "race-appropriate" lines. Lillian makes a calculated play for Ram, impressed by his commitment to his music. Eddie finds himself drawn to Connie. As feelings deepen, the two couples must decide what happens when the ladies' two-week vacation is up. Do the women stay in Paris? Or will the mad lads return to America?

Newman and Woodward, already married in real life, portray the primary story in this black and white film, and Ram and Lillian's struggle is purely about the artistic freedom (not to mention a dalliance with a world-weary French chanteuse) that Paris affords Ram in his career as a composer and performer. While Lillian presses for a commitment, Ram isn't interested and initially breaks it off.

After confessing their love, Eddie and Connie talk marriage but can't agree on a future. Connie has a teaching gig to return to that's she fought too hard to get. She's also deeply connected to her roots, her family, and her home; regardless of the problems back in the U.S. of A., she is committed to being part of the solution. Eddie has been in Paris five years, finally feels free, and has no interest in a return. In a painful scene, Eddie tells Connie that he will never go back to America, where racism, segregation, abuse, and disrespect await a black man. "I don't beg for anything anymore! I'm not interested in The Cause," he says, "I'm only interested in us." "No, you're only interested in you," Connie responds.

Meanwhile, music is the great harmonizer. The Ellington soundtrack is swoon worthy, and a scene where Wild Man enters the subterranean jazz club with his entire band blowing their hearts out in a challenge is totally jazzalicious. Resplendent in its hand-clapping abandon, the music percolates with Satchmo displaying all the trumpet skills he's known for. Both Newman and Poitier studied with noted players to make their performances look authentic.

In addition to being a great travelogue of Paris by foot, Paris Blues is supposed to be about the travails of love, but the romances are too easily tied with a bow. The flick is about the cost of freedom. Unfortunately, the issue of freedom for African Americans is relative: Stay in America and Love it, defend it, and fight to change it, or leave its shores for a country where tolerance for racial differences seems to be higher. Even today, Paris is filled with numerous African American expats who came to shake off the shackles of America's deeply ingrained racism.