The Secret Life of Bees

Genre: Drama
Cast: Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, Hilarie Burton, Paul Bettany
Director: Gina Prince - Bythewood

I never thought bees could be the central motive of a human drama, dealing with domestic abuse, cultural and racial preconceptions and moreover, children growing up too early and bearing painful memories. Of course, the bee analogy is just a metaphor to emphasize, in contrast with the bees' caring nature, the harsh, harmful and insensible nature of some human individuals, thankfully not all.

If it's hard to mend a broken hard, it's harder to make amends with your own past or even reality. Overcoming is the central word of this movie. If some might think of the movie to be tediously “sweet” or to obscure, in some way, differences that can't be surpassed in reality, they are wrong in a certain way. This is their perspective. Don't view the movie as a matter of fact, but as a matter of how facts should be or should have been. People should help each other and people should forgive, they just don't most of the time, and because they don't it doesn't mean that this is the way they should be. Reality is wrong most of time, but that's not a must. So don't say, “yeah right, like this ever happens in reality”, because this should happen in reality. We're the ones with messed up views, because we're too accustomed with a wrong order of things.

Well, this is at least what I thought when I viewed the movie. So I'm not gonna tell you anything about the actual plot, just these thoughts I've had. About the casting, what can I say, Queen Latifah does her best not to be a stereotype for the middle-aged African-American woman of the 60s' and she succeeds, really picturing the image of the caring mother “the queen bee”, the center and spring of love, nurture and acceptance. Lily Owens played wonderfully by Dakota Fanning, of whom I've been a fan since she started acting, has grown up pretty well in this role and is as good as needed in acting as not to draw the entire attention to her. So the central theme remains the struggle of African-American women of the last century to gain their rightful equality amongst other nationalities, both in legal rights and cultural awareness.

About the movie, it is good to know that it represents an adaptation of the best selling book “The Secret Life of Bees”, by Sue Monk Kidd. Directed by Ms. Gina Prince-Bythewood, it stars Queen Latifah, Dakota Fanning, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Sophie Okonedo and Paul Bettany in the colorful scenery of South Carolina.

You can find the book by Sue Monk Kidd, "The Secret Life of Bees", on iTunes, right here

Previous weeks:

Comments

Your Comment: