Retracing his father's footsteps
Mario Van Peebles plays the ambitious filmmaker whose 1971 flick shattered stereotypes of blacks in American cinema.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published July 8, 2004
Melvin Van Peebles is the man who stuck it to The Man, a quaint 1960s term for monolithic white oppression of African-American dreams since the first slave boats arrived on our shores. At a time when black people in movies were either Poitier-polished or stereotypically shuffling, Van Peebles risked everything - including his son's love - to demolish that status quo.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was an incendiary film in 1971, a movie Van Peebles made on the cheap and on Los Angeles streets still singed by 1960s unrest. For African-Americans, the film had a blazingly cathartic effect, the first time on screen that a black man was shown beating corrupt, brutal cops by any means necessary. Perhaps the hero's morals were questionable but that only mattered to white viewers squirming for a reason to denounce it.
Critics couldn't honestly praise the film for its quality. Recognizing its importance, however, was inescapable.
Mario Van Peebles is the son nearly sacrificed by his father's ambition, at first shoved aside by artistic preoccupation then embarrassed by performing a sexually charged scene in Sweet Sweetback at age 13. The elder Van Peebles considered it a budgetary move, unwilling to pay another actor's fee. Their strained relationship improved over the years - although not as tidily as it's depicted in the new film,Baadasssss!
Directed and co-written by Mario Van Peebles, Baadasssss! is a fascinating look at turning points in racial equality, American cinema and the no less vital issue of a father loving his son. It's a valentine to his father's determination and vision, but it's also the younger Van Peebles' way of making amends for a flinty man who can't. It's a way to say it's all right, I forgive your inattentiveness because of what you accomplished. That dynamic informs every frame of Baadasssss!, making it not only a vivid portrait of the creative process but also a deeply personal statement of pride with perhaps a twinge of lingering resentment.
Mario plays his father, a role he was literally born into, and the performance is impressive. There's never a sense that Melvin is being lionized, so consistently shown are his faults. He's immediately stubborn, refusing to follow studio orders after receiving a three-picture deal. Doing that would simply perpetuate insulting screen images of African-Americans. He wants to make a new kind of movie that even his agent (Saul Rubinek) believes is certain failure.
Melvin isn't sure what the movie will be, but inspiration comes in a fevered sequence when he confronts his demons. The scene plays like Martin Sheen's breakdown in Apocalypse Now yet with a creative spark rather than an angry smolder. The story of Sweet Sweetback - actually more of a primal scream than a story - begins to take shape.
Baadasssss! works superbly during these early minutes when the internal creative process is vividly externalized. Then it merely becomes an underdog tale, albeit one set among faces and places not previously associated with art. Mario van Peebles defines his father's ingenuity, using nonunion porn movie talent to cut costs, defying notions that Sweet Sweetback is a no-win proposition. We know how it ends, so tension is diluted.
Essentially Baadasssss! dramatizes what the elder Van Peebles eloquently explained in his 1998 documentary, Classified X. The sorry traditions of black screen images are lambasted while the rise of a truly African-American film perspective is lionized. If the lessons occasionally overshadow the drama (or if the raunchy Boogie Nights-style drama trivializes history), that's fine.
More could be made of Melvin Van Peebles' fight with the MPAA ratings board that became a flashpoint in a cultural inferno. The climactic success of Sweet Sweetback is compressed into a resolution neater than it was. Those are quibbles for the informed. Just as the elder Van Peebles' film insisted that moviegoers look at what's happening "now" in 1971, Baadasssss! energetically encourages us to celebrate a groundbreaking "then."
Baadasssss!Grade: B+
Director: Mario Van Peebles
Cast: Mario Van Peebles, Joy Bryant, Rainn Wilson, Saul Rubinek, T.K. Carter, Nia Long, Paul Rodriguez, Khleo Thomas, David Alan Grier, Ossie Davis, Terry Crews
Screenplay: Mario Van Peebles, Dennis Haggerty, based on the book Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song by Melvin Van Peebles
Rating: R; harsh profanity, frontal nudity, drug abuse, violence
Running time: 108 min.