DVD Review of The Secret Life of Bees
Southern Tale of Racial and Personal Unrest, Starring Dakota Fanning
© Cody Roy
Feb 19, 2009
From writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) comes the adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s best-selling novel The Secret Life of Bees.
A Troubled Dakota Fanning
In 1964, in Sylvan, South Carolina, fourteen-year-old Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) spends most of her time on the family peach farm trying to remember her mom, whom she accidentally shot and killed ten years prior during a domestic dispute. T. Ray (Paul Bettany), her drunk daddy, only acknowledges her long enough to punish her, so she has basically been raised by their African-American housekeeper Rosaleen Daise (Academy Award-winner Jennifer Hudson).
Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Hudson on a Journey
As this is the year of the Civil Rights Act, Rosaleen secretly decides to register to vote, but along the way, she and Lily are intercepted by a klan of good ol’ boys, an encounter that ends in violence for which Rosaleen is wrongly jailed. A somewhat self-absorbed and petulant teen, Lily takes this opportunity to break free and research her mom’s past, so she facilitates Rosaleen’s escape from a local, lightly-guarded hospital. And together, they hit the road, armed with essentially one clue regarding her mom’s past—a Black Madonna image from Tiburon, South Carolina.
Queen Latifah and Alicia Keys: The Honeydippers
Once there, Lily quickly learns that her memento is actually a label for Black Madonna Honey, a local business run by the Boatwright sisters. Lily and Rosaleen locate the Boatwright home (an Easter-pink two story) and discover that the three women are actually African-American: the simple, delicate May (Sophie Okonedo), the scowling activist June (Alicia Keys), and the maternally majestic August (Queen Latifah) . . . the “Calendar Sisters.” After lying to gain sympathy and acceptance, Lily and Rosaleen readily find a place in the Boatwright home, and it is here, the unlikeliest of places, that Lily finds out more than she’s ever wanted to know about her mom and about herself.
The Old South, Or Is It?
Prince-Bythewood does an exceptional job of recreating the 1960s South in terms of setting. It’s as though one can feel the kudzu underfoot, smell the magnolia in the air, and taste the homemade biscuits, but amazingly, it never comes off as a caricature of the South. However, even though this film touches on it a bit, one can imagine that the violence, animosity, and intolerance of the era (due to the socio-political turmoil of the time) were deliberately dialed down in order to ensure a PG-13 rating. A little white girl living with a black family in the 1960s South being roundly accepted and overlooked? Highly unlikely.
Not the Traditional Chick Flick
What’s also commendable is the film’s reluctance to delve into the cloying side of chick flicks. Yes, the plot comes completely honey-dipped, meaning there isn’t a loose end in sight, but incredibly, the movie never sags from sappiness. Rather than having August become Lily’s surrogate mother of sorts (her very own Black Madonna), as one would expect, and crescendo into a nice tearful embrace, August teaches Lily the significance of finding a mother within oneself.
