Women's Pictures - Dee Rees's Bessie
Friday, December 11, 2015 at 3:30PM 
Considering how often Pariah is called "a critical darling," it's disappointingly shocking that it took another 4 years for Dee Rees's next movie. Bessie is an HBO biopic of singer Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, who rose to prominence in the 1920s and died in a car accident in the mid-1930s. When the movie premiered earlier this year, Angelica Jade Bastién wrote a fabulous personal review of it which I highly suggest you read. As Angelica points out, Rees's sophomore effort is a well-directed film that gets a lot right, even though it falls into a lot of the typical biopic pitfalls.
While the plotline of Bessie's meteoric rise, humbling fall, and return to semi-greatness followed a predictable biopic path, what really struck me about this collaboration between Dee Rees and Queen Latifah was how unapologetically individual it was. Unfortunately, fact-based films about black characters, if they are expected to attract a wider (whiter) audience, incorporate white characters to a large degree. Selma and 12 Years A Slave both have white antagonists who gain a lot of screentime - in the case of 12 Years A Slave, it was enough screentime to net Michael Fassbender an Academy Award Nominations.
In Bessie, blackness and queerness dominate...
Between fantastic musical numbers by Queen Latifah in top form, white characters pop up occasionally to attempt to profit from or prostheletize about Bessie Smith (Latifah). But otherwise everyone, from the crowd Bessie sings with to the people she does business with, is black. Questions of blackness are constantly addressed in the film. After Bessie is fired from a job for failing the "paper bag test" - her skin is darker than a paper bag - she institutes her own paper bag test and refuses to hire any "yellow bitches." It's a backlash, but a powerful one, and speaks powerfully to the confrontational way that Bessie Smith - and Dee Rees - presents her blackness in a whitewashed world. Questions of race are continuously brought up during the movie, though the biopic is forced to move with such fast speed that often moments such as the paper bag test are left hanging.
Equally controversial and confrontational is Bessie's sexuality. What makes the film so confrontational is how normally it portrays queer women of color. Early in the film, Bessie meets Ma Rainey, played with thorough self-satisfaction by Mo'nique. Ma Rainey sleeps with women, and does a cabaret act in drag, and other than a quick tossed off line, neither is addressed as either bad or unusual. Likewise, Bessie's affair with Lucille is presented as heartfelt and sweet. But the thing is, this is unusual, not just for 1920s America, but also for 2015 American television. Count all of the queer women of color on TV you can think of right now. I'd be shocked if counted past one hand.
Ultimately, this is the contradiction of Dee Rees's film: Its biopic structure is completely quotidian, but its subject matter is exactly the opposite. It's so close to being exceptional. Rees continues to prove that she understands camera placement even with a new Director of Photography. Likewise, she pulls an incredible performance from Queen Latifah. But ultimately, that's not enough. It's possible that we may have to wait another 4 years for a film or series from the director. Rees says that she has some projects lined up. Let's all pray to the ghost of Bessie Smith that they come to fruition.
12/17: Water Lillies - Celine Sciamma's first film was an exploration of young love in a summer camp. (Netflix)
12/24: Tomboy - Sciamma's second takes on the sensitive subject of trans identity in childhood. (Amazon Prime)
12/31: Girlhood - Sciamma's latest looks at the relationships girls develop with each other in a contemporary girl's gang. (Amazon Prime)
Dee Rees, Directors, HBO, LGBT, Queen Latifah, bessie, biopics, racial politics
Reader Comments (10)
Hope this comes on demand somewhere. Sounds fantastic. Pre-WWII black queer culture was/is so vital and yet is so tragically under represented.
As much as I was looking forward t o this with Queen ... I was quite disappointed overall with the production... at times seemed somewhat amateurish to me.
I think Bessie fails as a movie because Rees is uninterested in a straight forward biopic which the real life subject desperately needs because the greater public (myself included) know next to nothing about Bessie Smith. Has never heard a song and at best may have seen a picture of her without definite context.
Dee Rees' strength as a filmmaker is her dialogue between black women. I have never heard black women talk to each other in the movies with what feels like fully realized authenticity. I think she maybe better off writing her own material than adapting others because her agenda with Bessie was at odds with the importance of informing the audience on who this real life person is.
Her lack of an ending was chickenshit and her stories about her upbringing with made up. Which begs the question how come she did't insist on making Bessie about one particular life changing event in her life? Since she works best under the conditions of a narrow focus instead of the broad reach the movie needed to be as a biopic for contemporary audiences.
I really hope Queen Latifah gets some sort of award for this because she was straight up luminous. Especially in the musical sequences.
@Derreck - I totally agree, Queen Latifah always has a presence that I enjoy, but she knocked it out of the park here. She totally deserved that SAG nomination.
I did find some scenes rushed as Anne Marie mentions. However, I was engrossed in a world that I never see, and know very little about.
I can only hope Rees goes on to make more films or HBO type productions.
3rtful, I'm curious how you don't think BESSIE fits as a "straight forward biopic"
I was ok with Queen Latifah losing the Emmy for this, though it would've been nice to see her win since she should've gotten one a few years back for the HBO movie Life Support (which she won the Globe and SAG for), but perennial awards stealer Helen Mirren came through and snatched the Emmy for--wait for it--PRIME SUSPECT: THE FINAL ACT... lmao.
@Glenn
The movie omits her death. A series of professional highlights and personal tragedies are presented without a connective context nor resolution. I had a desire to read a biography on Smith after the movie than seek out her music. It really is a failure as a standard biopic.
/3rtful - I wasn't a fan of skipping Bessie's death either, though seeing how she died in a car accident, I can understand how Rees decided it wasn't thematically relevant to the story she was telling.
As for "a series of professional highlights and personal tragedies...without a connective context nor resolution," that's sounds like a standard biopic to me! Not a *great* biopic. A *standard* one.
LadyEdith & Derreck - The music was my favorite part as well! Hearing Queen Latifah belt renewed my secret wish that she'd make a musical.
Yeah, I'm still a bit confused. Being inspired to read a biography doesn't strike me as a bad thing since it implies her life was interesting enough to want to know more.