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Review of the movie "Fresh"
by
Brent A Fuller
"Fresh"; one of the greatest movies of the last decade.
Reviewer: Brent A. Fuller from Minneapolis
I didn't expect to like this movie.
I've seen "Clockers" and "Boyz In the Hood" etc...
I've seen a lot of the Spike Lee "joints".
Now I've seen "Fresh".
I will inevitably rave over it, but the point is that the movie is a true
rarity.
The directing and scene editing were seamless. The coverage of the culture was
deep, thorough and accurate.
The plot... the plot depicts a twelve-ish chess player who has often been told
of his greatest negative influence. From the neighbors to the courts; his father
has been deemed unfit. Contributing not to society, the man's greatest endeavor
is hustling dollars playing chess and sometimes, when he sees his son,
instructing him in the game.
The skills of the chess teacher though don't include patience. He is harsh and
rides his son on those forbidden afternoons in the park.
While he distills ever better stategy in his son's game, the boy is thinking of
chess in terms of its implications to reality and designs a chess-like strategy
in his ghetto life that is finely honed and intent.
A great artist wrote this film. A great director executed a fine screenplay.
There is nothing extraneous about this film.
Every scene is essential and delivered purely. There is no jive, editorializing,
propagandanizing theme behind it.
It is simply the real deal about a brilliant
young mind surviving in his tough life by using every single one of the tools in
his reach.
Like his teacher/father taught him about chess, he wastes not a single move in
his life of depraved circumstances involving treachery, illicit conduct and
violence.
In the end, it dawned on me that the role the father was allowed to play in the
boy's life vs. the fact that he was the only asset the boy had ever had access
to was a paradigm shift.
It was a true tragedy that happens in the lives of people every day.
As the movie closes you see the boy's first tears and they're due to the
pervasive lie and fraud that has been perpetrated on he and his world. But the
tears are an involuntary response to his father's character. Even in a moment of
more of the same callous criticism from him he sees his father's constancy that
has always been lacking everywhere else. There is the shift.
The tragedy is that it is far too late. The world has indelibly encroached
itself, his father is an opponent and the boy will wear his cold, manly armor
till death.
His youthfulness amidst his father's constant criticism must have seemed as
harsh as the rest of the world had always been. As though to contradict
society's judgment toward his father from earliest memory, the man becomes a
sort of twisted dim beacon of decency despite the brown paper bag in his hand in
the park where the chess players go.
I don't review movies.
But I just watched this movie at 3am last night by
accident. I was just checking the weather before falling into bed. But at noon
with my wife today I was moved again and we watched in sympathy, anger and
another emotion; I understood for the first time.
My praise to the director, Boaz Yakim.
As soon as I'm done writing this, I intend to find other films he's done and
order them.
Other movies I like are "JFK", "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", "The Barfly",
"Good Will Hunting", "Hoffa", "The Recruit", "The Rounders", "Four Rooms",
"Apocalypse Now" and "Basquiat".
I hope these comments encourage someone to see the movie and that you enjoy it
as much as I did.
Oh... the acting is of true quality.
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