RACE IS ABOUT RACISM AND WINNING
Had the film Race been exhibited during 2015, Academy Award nominations would have not shut out African Americans or a plot about them. Directed by Stephen Hopkins, Race presents extensive details about how Cleveland native Jesse Owens (played by Stephan James) won four Gold Medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Although he expects racist behavior from arrogant Whites, who call him “boy,” but there is a lot more in the story. One of the main themes is that the American Olympic Committee votes 58-56 not to boycott the games after many street protests. Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons), later head of the American Olympic Committee, goes to Berlin to negotiate with Josef Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat) to make sure that Blacks and Jews will be allowed to complete in a city that stops displaying roundups and Jewish symbols. Brundage returns to New York to argue that the vote should think of the needs of the athletes rather than trying to make a political statement. When Owens wins, Hitler (Adrian Swicker) refuses to greet him, and Goebbels tries to order Leni Riefenstal (Carine van Houten) not to film his victories. But she has Hitler’s complete support, even though she is undermining the Nazi propaganda line. One of Owens’s German competitors, Carl “Luz” Long (David Kross), even helps him to win because of his opposition to Nazism. On a personal level, the film depicts his boyhood romance, his family’s role in supporting him despite pressure from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to join the boycott, a prominent Black woman’s lust for him, and his reunion and marriage to his Cleveland sweetheart (Sehanic Banton). Much credit for Owens’s success is attributed to his coach, Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis), who challenges him to excel. Owens, in turn, insists that his coach be allowed to serve as a coach on the American team. At one point, American coaches try to drop their two Jewish athletes from one event, whereupon Owens refuses to compete, only to be persuaded by the Jewish athletes to get his fourth Gold Medal. Titles at the end provide information on what happened to the major figures in the film. Emotional peaks occur throughout Race, which the Political Film Society has nominated as best film exposé and best film on human rights of 2016. MH
A CENTURION IS CONVERTED IN RISEN
Risen is a Christian redemption film, released during Lent. Governor Pontius Pilate (played by Peter Firth) is assigned to keep order in Palestine, where Jews are in revolt. The Pharisees urge Pilate to kill Jesus (Cliff Curtis) in order to avoid unrest from yet another movement of religious fanatics, and Pilate consents. But Pilate later agrees to have Jesus’s body placed in a tomb, whereupon the Pharisees warn that his followers may try to steal the body, so the tomb is sealed with a stone so big and heavy that several Roman soldiers are required to move the stone over the door of the tomb. Yet one day two Roman guards awake to find the tomb open, and the body has disappeared. Now Pilate assigns his top centurion, Clavius (Joseph Fiennes), to locate the body in order to avoid chaos when the emperor visits in a few days. However, when Clavius tracks down Jesus in a meeting with his disciplines, he realizes that a miracle has indeed occurred and is mesmerized. Soldiers try to arrest the disciplines, Clavius helps them escape, and several other Biblical events occur. The film is intended to inspire faith, but director Kevin Reynolds’s major flaw is to depict Clavius as whispering almost inaudibly throughout the film, something contrary to the requirements of a commander of thousands of troops during a battle early in the film, so the apparent hero of the film is depicted as if converted and humbled even before he first knows about Jesus. MH