When a friend of mine lost her aunt recently, all of the woman’s children came for the service. Some of them hadn’t even visited their mother while she was ill.
They came, my friend said, for the spoils. For whatever “riches” their mother had left behind. One daughter wanted her mom’s fur coat, which she took for herself and shockingly wore to the funeral.
I was reminded of death and dying and what we leave behind while watching the movie “I Will Follow” on Friday night. In that movie, an estranged daughter also goes after her mother’s fur coat, which a male friend had given her years ago when she played drums for some major artists. “He might’ve been my daddy,” she tells her cousin, who also wanted the coat for herself. The cousin was the one who actually took care of the mother while she was dying of breast cancer.
I liked this movie for more than what it showed about how we ought to parcel out our “things” before we die so our relatives don’t fight over them or the stuff doesn’t get picked over at an auction.
The movie was a refreshing relief from the previews featuring crashing cars and booming music that had just stormed across the screen. The only loud moment amid the usual frustrating ones that come with a move was a one-sided confrontation between the daughter, played by Michole White, and the niece, played by Salli Richardson-Whitfield. You could feel the daughter’s anger and guilt, and her isolation as she blamed the niece for the estrangement.
I call this a “peace and quiet” movie – that thing we women need after an aggravating day at work, or a fight with a friend or loved one, or a reprieve from the kids. It’s a very unhurried, reflective movie that takes us through one day and night in the life of Richardson-Whitfield’s character as she prepares to move out of a house she had shared with her aunt. She does a great job of allowing us into her grief but not sugaring it up with sentimentality.
Throughout the move, writer and director Ava DuVernay offered us a sense of tranquility in this her first full-length feature film, which mimics her own experience with her aunt. It’s much of what the mother in the movie was seeking when she moved to the hitherlands of southern California with her niece, who put her job as a makeup artist to the stars on hold.
The shots of the surroundings – lush green trees, the grounds and façade of the house, and the silent rooms inside it – made this seem like a good place and a good way to wait for the inevitable on your own terms. There seemed, though, to be a bit too many of them and they felt disconnected from the characters.
“I Will Follow” is not your typical “Movie of the Week” story about breast cancer that generates sniffles and tears. Although breast cancer is not “normal,” the movie shows it in its complexity: one of the characters is a satellite repairwoman who is a breast cancer survivor whom the niece high-fives on the rooftop after finding out.
I recognized Richardson-Whitfield from the sci-fi TV show “Eureka,” where she plays a woman of calm demeanor. And that’s what she is in “I Will Follow,” a movie distributed through the African American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM) formed by DuVernay. The director hopes to release two independent African American films each year, opening in AMC theaters. She made this one for $50,000 of her own money, she said in an interview.
I went to see the movie as a member of Reelblack, a Philadelphia organization that supports and promotes African American films, especially independent films. If you’re not a fan of Tyler Perry’s movies – some of which I like, as a matter of fact – be sure to check out this and future AFFRM movies. That doesn’t mean you blindly recommend them, but if it’s a good movie, tell your friends about it.
“I Will Follow” has gotten some great reviews – Roger Ebert gave it a plus – and some not-so-good ones, which is to be expected.
I saw the movie with a friend, who found it too slow-moving. She was basically bored, and wished the movie would hurry up and end, she said once it was over. Maybe it wasn’t dramatic enough for her. I found the drama inherent in the relationships between the characters rather than being played out on screen.
“I certainly know that it was a thoughtful consideration of grief, and living through it and learning from it,” she said.
Go see the movie to both support it and enjoy it. And while you’re looking, think about all the stuff you’ve accumulated and will leave behind. Will your family fight over it when you’re gone? Or will they toss it in the trash? How do you ensure that it doesn’t end up that way?
In the movie, the daughter angrily takes all of her mother’s stuff, including that black fur coat.
