Pioneer actor and activist Sidney Poitier, who died at age 94, alchemised the Black condition into a dignified on-screen presence in the 20th century. Bongani Madondo wrestles with his legacy
The problem with The Violent Heart isn t that it goes too far, it s that it doesn t go far enough. Written and directed by Kerem Sanga, and unfolding in the type of desolate rural American landscape where movie characters tend to either battle over ownership of farmland or participate in demonic rituals, this movie arrives preceded by claims that it s a melodrama in the tradition of Douglas Sirk ( Magnificent Obsession ), embracing coincidence and tragic fate.
But what s onscreen feels more like a hushed, emotionally constipated middle-American indie drama, where pretty much everybody is weighed down by the horrors of the past even though they go about their days in clueless innocence or lie about everything being fine. Imagine an early Bruce Springsteen ballad worked over in a fiction writing workshop until the life has been bled out of it. Hell breaks loose in the film s final stretch, and sure enough, that s when things finally start to cook. But by then it s too late