This was a great way to touch the face of God! Rex Ingram brings a wonderful gravitas to De Lawd. Although the brainchild initially of white playwright Marc Connelly, it is refreshing at any time to view spirituality from an African American viewpoint. All the actors bring a fresh interpretation to the stories of the Bible. Besides CABIN IN THE SKY, not much more has been generated from such a viable genre.
I have watched this movie several times and always enjoy seeing Ingram stride out with that glowing smile of certainty as if to say, "Well, who did you think I REALLY was?" It's his attitude that's so hilarious. He's playing it straight and yet playing it for laughs all at the same time. He conveys what I have always thought all the time. Black People are a highly spiritual people who grasp spiritual concepts easily and well.
Ingram carries this show in much the same way that Paul Robeson carried Eugene O'Neil's THE EMPEROR JONES. He plays Adam and an Old Testament Warrior with an exultant virile manly grace that makes you believe that there must be a High John the Conqueror. Eddie Anderson makes a great Noah and Oscar Polk does Gabriel proud. The mystery is why there aren't more dramas this absorbing taking either a more serious or humorous tone. The Bible has many more such stories worthy of extrapolating into meaningful, insightful dramas from many different cultural perspectives.
The music is rousing and uplifting and a great way to contemplate the meaning of the Bible and the various issues it presents for spiritual enlightenment. Naturally, it would be great to see an African and African American Christ sharing his miracles and wisdom with the exploited and oppressed. This would be a great way to make the men and women of the Bible more accessible to the modern mindset.
The greatest device of this drama is how it promotes the imaginative prowess and spiritual imagination of the child. After all, it is children who imagine a God and a Christ not unlike their Fathers and Mothers and Uncles and Aunts. That more than anything justifies this point of view. There was a time when children were seen as the highest expression of a culture rather than a burden to medicated out of sight and out of mind.
I'm looking forward to more staged and filmed stories like this one which continue to appeal to every taste and persuasion of spiritual thought and feeling.
I have watched this movie several times and always enjoy seeing Ingram stride out with that glowing smile of certainty as if to say, "Well, who did you think I REALLY was?" It's his attitude that's so hilarious. He's playing it straight and yet playing it for laughs all at the same time. He conveys what I have always thought all the time. Black People are a highly spiritual people who grasp spiritual concepts easily and well.
Ingram carries this show in much the same way that Paul Robeson carried Eugene O'Neil's THE EMPEROR JONES. He plays Adam and an Old Testament Warrior with an exultant virile manly grace that makes you believe that there must be a High John the Conqueror. Eddie Anderson makes a great Noah and Oscar Polk does Gabriel proud. The mystery is why there aren't more dramas this absorbing taking either a more serious or humorous tone. The Bible has many more such stories worthy of extrapolating into meaningful, insightful dramas from many different cultural perspectives.
The music is rousing and uplifting and a great way to contemplate the meaning of the Bible and the various issues it presents for spiritual enlightenment. Naturally, it would be great to see an African and African American Christ sharing his miracles and wisdom with the exploited and oppressed. This would be a great way to make the men and women of the Bible more accessible to the modern mindset.
The greatest device of this drama is how it promotes the imaginative prowess and spiritual imagination of the child. After all, it is children who imagine a God and a Christ not unlike their Fathers and Mothers and Uncles and Aunts. That more than anything justifies this point of view. There was a time when children were seen as the highest expression of a culture rather than a burden to medicated out of sight and out of mind.
I'm looking forward to more staged and filmed stories like this one which continue to appeal to every taste and persuasion of spiritual thought and feeling.