“The Best Of Enemies”– Movie Review

This week, I attended a TimesTalks screening of the new drama, “The Best Of Enemies”, starring Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell. 

Synopsis

When a Klan leader and an African-American activist are forced to work together, will they learn to be more tolerant of each other?

Story

In Durham, North Carolina of 1971, the KKK has a stranglehold on many residents; as a matter of fact, many elected officials – while not actual members themselves – are quite supportive of the Klan and use them to help with maintaining white control.  Leader of the local Klan organization is C.P. Ellis (Rockwell), who runs a gas station in town.  His association with this group is something of an open secret, yet no one does much of anything to stop him from terrorizing their African American neighbors or white people who may be sympathetic to their plight.  

Of course, none of this sits terribly well with Ann Atwater (Henson), a fellow Durham resident who works as an activist for local African-American causes.  While she fights hard for herself, her family and her friends, Ann realizes that it’s a truly Sisyphean task – not that such a thing is sufficient to stop her, it’s just that she’s not foolish enough to think that any of it will be at all easy.  Ann’s greatest challenge comes when an all-black school is burned down, causing its students to miss school.  While they try to attended split schedules in order to make up the time, the best way to catch up is to integrate these students with their white counterparts at the remaining school.

This of course does not sit well with C.P., the Klan and most of the white people in town.  When legal forces intervene, they send Bill Riddick (Babou Ceesay), an African-American lawyer from up north, who is considered expert in resolving these matters.  In surveying the political landscape, Riddick decides that he must convene a charrette with the major stakeholders in order to resolve the matter.  In order to do so, he must gather together a collection of individuals from the opposing sides and pick a leader on each side.  But when he picks C.P. and Ann as leaders, will a peaceful resolution ever be realized? 

Review

“The Best Of Enemies” is based on a true story and is adapted from a book of the same name.  While the movie’s ending packs quite the emotional wallop, it is really the end titles that are more fascinating than the film itself.  During the credits, old interviews with the real people are shown; C.P. died in 2005 and Ann passed – poverty-stricken – in 2016.  Since Ann survived C.P., it is rather fitting that she delivered his eulogy. It is certainly a shame neither of these people lived to see their respective story reach the big screen. 

That said, it probably would have better been told as a documentary rather than a feature film. Given their history together and the amount of press coverage Ann got for her activism, there’s probably a good deal of footage that could have been repurposed for a more compelling documentary.  While the director swears nothing was embellished in this movie, he maintains the source material is so rich there was a considerable amount of information – both concerning the two individuals and the overall story itself – which needed to be expunged from the screenplay.  Even better justification for a multi-part documentary on PBS or Netflix, not unlike Ken Burns’ work.

This motion picture could very well have been produced as a made-for-TV movie; had it been, it likely would be better received.  As a major studio release, however, there’s not much about it that is particularly remarkable; in all likelihood, the reason for releasing it at all might very well be tied in to the success of the award-nominated “The Green Book” (a critical darling, despite its well-documented controversy) as well as the political climate in which we currently find ourselves (Charlottesville, anyone?).  One positive note about the film is its make-up artists: how they managed to make Taraji P. Henson look dowdy is a minor miracle.