onumbersix

Remakes do not always give happy results. Recently, we saw the 3rd "remake" of Ben Hur which flopped badly. Yet its 2nd in 1959 was universally praised.

Here, Sofia Coppola, the daughter of FF, decided to take over the disturbing story "The Beguiled" that Don Siegel brought to the screen in 1971, with Clint Eastwood in unusual role for him and whose low key acting served him admirably.

The version proposed by Coppola adds nothing to the original. The recreation of America's South in 1864 is no more convincing. The sexual tension, so palpable in the original, is almost absent in this version.

This film has the merit however, to reveal to us a beautiful Nicole Kidman who becomes more and more a mature actress with much aplomb. She can rightly aspire to become the "Catherine Deneuve" of American- British cinema.

So why a "remake"? I don't know.

It would have been significantly cheaper for the studio to simply re- launch the Siegel version for a new generation of moviegoers.

I clearly have a weakness for stories about the pursuit of justice, of what is right and the German Nazi regime during World War 2, especially when they are based on real events. Race combines brilliantly these two themes. The long pursuit of real equality for blacks in the US, still in progress more than a century after the abolition of formal slavery, is punctuated by the appearance of these sports heroes who carry the burden of liberation of their people on their shoulders being the pioneers in their respective sport, besides having reached record highs. Through cinema I have known the boxer Jack Johnson, the first black champion 1908-1915; the baseball player Jackie Robinson 1947-1956 whose exploits are commemorated by retiring his jersey number 42 in all major league teams today. My preference for these stories may be rooted in the empathy I have as a Québécois as we also have our sports heroes in history: Louis Cyr and Maurice Richard. In Race it is the story of Jessie (JC) Owens, the Olympic sprinter that during the 1933 Olympics showed to Hitler's face the flaws of his insane ideology based on the supposed superiority of the Aryan race, by eclipsing many world records. The film is touching, very moving and visually beautiful. A definite must see!