A Raisin in the Sun was the first african-american play written by an african-american to appear on broadway, but how does it translate to the big screen? There seems to be very little change in the film adaptation of the stage play (in fact, most of the cast was brought directly from the stage production to hollywood
in order to utilize their performances). Indeed, the direction could've been set on auto-pilot and the same film would have resulted. A Raisin in the Sun feels like a play slapped onto film one night, there's no special effort for film invested in either the direction, sets or general production. Sidney Poitier stars as Walter Younger, a man who, along with his wife and young son, live a day-to-day existence in a cramped apartment along with Walter's sister (Diana Sands) and mother (Claudia McNeil). Walter is a chauffeur who dreams of starting his own business. After his father dies, his mother comes into an insurance settlement of ten thousand dollars, and Walter has big plans for that money. Those plans are most often thwarted by his sister Beneatha, who's attending school with the intention of becoming a doctor, and sees the money as a ticket to medical school. The wife and mother seem to be two of a kind, as they serve as mediators in the family scuffles. The wife seems to have nothing but patience for a man who continually dismisses her as nothing more than a nuisance in his life. In fact, Poitier's Walter is quite the disgusting character, a slightly less warped version of A Streetcar Named Desire's Stanley. Sister Beneatha is no less reprehensible, and I'm hard-pressed to think up (off the top of my head, anyway) a more self-righteously self-obsessed character in the world of film. The only truly sympathetic (and realistic) character in the film is Mama. She's an earthy, good-souled woman who can't understand what went wrong with her children, that they should lack so much empathy for their own family members. The matriarch of the family feels authentic, the rest of the characters are just that: characters (to be fair, alot of plays don't ring true to my ears, sometimes the dialogue given to actors seems grandiose, as if the writer were imagining shakespearean drama rather than their own work). But what of the central theme of the play/film? What moral or platitude does the writer seek to imbue upon the viewer? There doesn't seem to be one in this film, other than the tacked-on side plot involving racism. The story/play/film of A Raisin in the Sun may have inspired a whole host of 1970s television (Good Times, The Jeffersons, etc.), but doesn't really elevate itself beyond a standard episode of such sitcoms. It's thoroughly watchable yet unfortunately forgettable.
February 22, 2010
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