Once Upon a Time . . . When We Were Colored movie review (1996)
The movie is based on a 1989 book by Clifton L. Taulbert, who published it with a small Kansas City firm and then saw it reach the best-seller lists after a strong review in the New York Times; it was the first book requested by Nelson Mandela after he was released from prison. One of its early readers was the television actor Tim Reid ("WKRP in Cincinnati," "Frank's Place"), who determined to film it even though it seemed "commercial" in no conventional sense. He assembled the enormous cast, shot on location in North Carolina, and has made a film that is both an impressive physical production (the period looks and feels absolutely authentic) and a deeply moving emotional experience. In many ways this film compares to "The Color Purple," although it has a simpler, more direct, less melodramatic quality; it is not about a few lives, but about life itself as it was experienced in the segregated South.
There are so many characters that to attempt a plot summary would be pointless. Better to remember some of the extraordinary scenes. Much of the story is told through the eyes of a young boy named Cliff (played at different ages by three actors), who is raised by his great-grandparents (Al Freeman Jr. and Paula Kelly). As he watches and learns, so do we, especially in a scene where "Poppa," his great-grandfather, takes him to town for a treat. It is on this trip that he makes the mistake of going into the "white" washroom in a gas station, and Poppa carefully traces the letters "C" and "W" and tells him what words they stand for, and why.
Few scenes in my memory have had a greater impact than the one where the boy, happily supplied with an ice cream cone, joins his great-grandfather in watching silently as a Klan parade marches ominously down Main Street. Al Freeman's character never says a word, but his jaw tightens and his eyes compress with pain, and we feel as we seldom have before in the movies how personally hurtful racism is.
But there are happier moments. Many of them involve Cliff's adventures in the neighborhood, especially on a day when a carnival comes to down, and one of the dancing girls is boarded with a local woman named Ma Ponk (Phylicia Rashad). The dancer, played by Iona Morris, is basically no more than a sideshow stripper, but to young eyes she seems impossibly glamorous.
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