“Black or White” is hardly a subtle title for a movie that deals with race and families. And writer-director Michael Binder’s drama about a custody dust-up between the grandparents of a biracial child arrives at an especially prickly moment, movie-wise.
For those who shrugged off seven of this year’s best-picture Oscar nominees as merely being films about “white men’s struggles,” this drama is likely to be used as further evidence of that Hollywood (and beyond) habit.
There’s little way around the fact Kevin Costner is the centerpiece in this sincere and engaging drama, although Octavia Spencer’s performance as paternal grandmother Rowena Jeffers — a self-made businesswoman and matriarch of an extended and varied brood — exerts its own force.
When Elliott Anderson’s wife dies unexpectedly, granddaughter Eloise’s care falls to him. While Elliott loves his only grandchild, it’s clear her day-to-day nurturing was his wife’s gift.
Aware of the vacuum created by the death, Rowena almost immediately begins efforts to share more formally in Eloise’s upbringing. (She’s also well aware of Elliott’s drinking problem.) To her mind, the little girl should come live with her and Eloise’s cousins, aunts and uncles in South Central.
What begins as a suggestion becomes litigation. Anthony Mackie plays Jeremiah, Rowena’s brother and a very successful attorney who takes on his sister’s suit as a test case.
While Elliott and Rowena live in very different versions of Los Angeles, they have much in common. Elliott’s haunted by his dead wife, Carol, played by Jennifer Ehle. (Their daughter died years earlier.) Rowena is being haunted by a living being, son Reggie.
Andre Holland portrays Eloise’s father, an addict, with all the seduction and disappointment that encompasses. (Elliott’s alcoholism provides a parallel quandary.)
“Black or White” is buoyed by a beguiling performance from newcomer Jillian Estel. Eloise is bright and frank, loyal but yearning, present but torn. She’s a lovely spirit and, like Rowena and Elliott, moviegoers want the best for her. More problematic: Like those battling grandparents, we, too, may find it difficult to shake our own cultural investment in what that might be.
Such is the gentle power of Binder’s film. Based on Binder’s experience, “Black or White” isn’t sophisticated about race. There’s nothing here that suggests the writer-director pored over 30 years of critical race theory.
Instead, the drama falls in line with his previous films: “The Upside of Anger,” and “Reign Over Me.” One dealt with a husband’s seeming desertion, the other with the loss of a family in the attacks of 9/11 — heavy subjects treated with Binder’s talent for locating humor amidst pathos.
Here, thoughtful humor comes by way of family court judge (a very deadpan Paula Newsome); and more poignantly, Duvan (Mpho Koaho), the tutor Elliott hires. As aspirational African immigrant provides an outsider view of America’s black-white tussle.
It may be helpful — or vexing — to think of “Black or White” as the great grandchild of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” No, it won’t be as enduring — not even close. Yet it shares that message movie’s desire to acknowledge change and also speak the personal aches and shared possibilities that come with it.
That it comes by this honestly makes it a sympathetic, more than simply sentimental, journey.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or
