It took only twenty -five years of time for “compensation”, the first fictional feature of Zeinabu Irene Davis, Premièrent in Sundance until the time, next Friday, gets a theatrical version. Several films were affected by an unjustified ambiguity due to separate reviews when they were first shown. “Compensation”, however, received many enthusiasm from Sandans (including from Roger Ebert, in Chicago Sun times), Until now a review in diverseAs if he was a drug addict on Hollywood lacquer, cursed as “creative but indifferent” and condemned her to the “non -commercial” world. It was a bad time to launch independent and international films in general, and “compensation” was among the best films that remain in the shadow to their back, a decade ago, in special shows, for a more accepted generation than viewers, industry personnel.
I saw him for the first time in 2017, when it was shown in Mima; Review it for the first time in 2019, when she played in Bamy; I wrote about every opportunity I get, because it is a movie of many aspects, in just an hour and a half, it continues to reveal wonders. Like most wonderful films, “compensation” expands the possibilities of cinema, and my late viewing of her was a strange feeling of unpaved memory – from the experience that I never received, but I immediately felt that it was part of the past past, and it was only missing. Now, to watch the movie, in a new digital restoration (or, as Davis, “Renewal”), I closed aspects of it, so that it is always clearly present, but it is now decisive: its frame, its shape. However, there may be artwork, the essence of genius is simplicity, and with “compensation”, Davis converts the difficulties in the production of low budget into a backup and clear form, which proves to be fierce -Buddhism glasses. This form revives the entire film – the features of dramatic works, the style of performances, and serious emotional – while embodying a concept is worthy of observation. The result is intimate as it is abstract, analytical as it is lyric; Davis combines graceful frankness with the ideal for historical scope.
“Compensation” displays two parallel parallel stories that are largely linked and objectively, which, between them, framing the twentieth century. One of them was located in 1993 (when filming began), and the other is in 1906. In historical history, Malindy Brown (Michelle A. Banks), an intellectual and activist working as sewing, meets with a worker named Arthur Jones (John Earl Gilks); The Modern provides the relationship of Malaika Brown (which is also played by Banks), an ambitious graphic printer, and Nico Juns (Jelks), Secretary of the Children’s Library. In both stories, it depends on the possibility of a relationship on a man learning the American sign language. (Malindy Arthur knows while he also teaches him to read and write; Niko ASL learns by attending the classroom.) In both, she looks at the relationship skeptical in the woman’s circle: Malindy’s mother wonders about her link with an uneducated man; Her friend La Malaica challenged her relationship with hearing person. In both, black culture plays a prominent role, starting with Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem The film gets its title. In both, epidemiological diseases object. (It is not a spoiler to note that the Dunbar poem, which is displayed on the screen on the address card before starting the procedure, ends with the word “death”.)
The stories and topics of “compensation” in life come through a group of unusual devices whose willingness appears to be, as with all the great discoveries, it is inevitable as soon as it is done. Since the 1990s films were silent, Davis tells the story of Malindy and Arthur as a silent film, with bulletins for dialogue and narration. However, it indicates the peculiarities of this choice by adding soundtrack, although it lacks speech, including some sound effects, as if it was drawing attention to the decisive absence of the spoken dialogue. (There is also abundant piano music, most of them from Ragtime, author and played by Robinson-which raises the accompanying films in the silent era). As is expressed: Davis relies on exciting external sites (gardens, beaches and old homes) to photograph the public domain. For interior settings, such as a wonderful and comfortable room where Malindy lives, Davis production design is modest and expressive. Moderate decorative furniture, white clothing and lace curtains, vibrant wallpaper over regular weeds, a backup but official glass vessels invoking the times in eye-catching touches-as do Malindy clothes flowing, straw cap, velvet accuracy, arthur units, and arthur, and Arthur. Specialized high pants, tabs tabs, and a ramia hat. Davis’s direct photos from Qaeda (thanks to cinematic filming by Pierre Diser) feel the recovery from the past; In their concentrated balance, they allowed material details to sing.
The main Davis device to photograph the past and to give Malindi and Arthur to life depend on a wealth of archival images, which is the risk of misunderstanding if it is not clearly called: “compensation”, in part, a documentary film. All the time, Davis weaved an archived sponsorship event, and it became vibrant and immediate through her cinematic treatment. The camera moves through pictures in a way that creates a kind of montage: enlarge the details, expand out to detect panoramic views, and bring real people to those close to the two Arabs to the extent that they look actors in the drama. The film opens with such a documentary sequence, and it is a lesson in history in great immigration: the pictures determine the doubling of the black population in Chicago from 1900 to 1910 and some of the attractions of the culture that I went with, such as the publication of Web du BoisBlack people’s soulsThe “Treemonisha” opera is “Treemonisha”. None of the dramatic characters were presented until this complex first sequence is run.
The mass movement of the great migration is considered in archive pictures of train trips across rural fields, where blacks carry out the work of the farm and in pictures of the turmoil and the industrial city energy. In the ideal of “Education, Employment and Enlightenment” presented by City Life, Davis shows Urban Black Businessmen and craftsmen in their circulation. When Malindy is presented, Davis provides a picture of an integrated school for the deaf from the late nineteenth century, such as Malindy, which he attended, in the state of Mississippi. (Her school was dismissed, in 1906, which made her move to Chicago). Unpleasant smell. What appears in these non-imaginary parts is not the amount of research, but its intensity-a feeling of discovery in the archives to equal the feeling of the discovery that comes out of the specified offers, which have the suspense of immediate creation.
There is the same amount of documentary films woven in public imaginary serials – for beginners, documents of cultural history. The Malindy story includes dunbar poems, magazine Crisis (Founded by Du Bois and published by NAACP), the journalistic activity of IDA B. Wells (written by Malindy about the separation of her school), and the black opera singer Sissieretta Jones, especially the black cinema: films that she made by black artists for black viewers. Davis has a real example of this model, a short comedy called “The Railward Porter”, which is now lost and re -created, in a scene that Malindy and Arthur and their friends go to the cinema. (Rummy, this is the only scene in the 1906 story to show the spoken dialogue – the audience speaks to the screen!)
In the modern story, Malaika dances, an artist, (Banks is a dance and dancer designer), and Dunbar’s haircuts again and again in her story and Nico as well; The title of the title, which was appointed to music, inspires a wonderful dance by Malika Bell’s friend (Christopher Smith). Malaika and Nico are enthusiastic with African art and music and participating in Yoruba rituals. (The result in the modern section, is used slightly and wrap, which includes rhythm -based books and tools, are by Atiba Y. Jali) Choose a movie in a local doubling.
There is another documentary element in the “Compensation” center: deafness. The life of the silent women is shown in the movie, and their relationships in the world of speaking, with explicit participation. For Davis, the deaf is not a metaphor, it is just a way of life and a world of experience. (The recovery version of the film, thanks to the new technology, includes many illustrations that appear on the screen for hearing impairment) But when the couple saw a performance on the stage by Banks – which established a theater company for the deaf black actors – Davis immediately decided to throw it and change the characters and the text according to Therefore. Both stories emphasize the ASL centralization, and access to people hearing as a second language, especially in the modern story – a point of view of deaf culture as a vital aspect of culture in general. In the modern story, the deaf culture was developed on a wider scale. The resulting paradox is that with the expansion of the culture of deaf (but hearing people’s knowledge of them hardly accompanies), the relationships between deaf people and hearing people become increasingly preserved and difficult.
The distinctive form of “compensation” has an educational aspect by its nature. By telling Malindy and Malaika tales, Davis builds a large arc of time – a view of intimate life that is not detailed from the great forces of history, and romance as inseparable from cultural creation, at the present time that is tightly attached to the past. , As if the communication was remotely, metaphysical. Even the offers have an ideal historical period. According to Davis’s directives, banks and Sleex offer a mixture of liquid expression and solid reserves, from souvenirs in the intimate relationship, which share more classic Hollywood stars ways than modern flexible actors. Although both actors distinguish their historical and modern characters through different tones of performance and various gesture reviews, continuity is more clear than the differences, in a large part of it, the idea of stimulating “compensation”.
The great power of the film, beyond the emotional details of its romantic drama, is to distort a huge vision of historical unity. From one country to another, culture in general to a private life, the local field in the public domain, the religious world to the secular world, and the deaf to the session, from Africa to America, from the writer to the reader and the artist, displays Davis, Davis. The flow of communication is unabated and the transfer of experiences and ideas from person to person and from generation to generation. “Compensation” has a rare virtue depicting and embodying the personal experience of the continuous re -discovery and restoration date. Many films, especially independent films, are located in the forgetfulness area at the time of their creation. Sometimes, one of them may be identified late as major works that have been retroactively shot the history of cinema and guides its future. “Compensation” is one of the few films that embody its fate. ♦