Product Description

Oprah Winfrey (THE COLOR PURPLE) and Danny Glover (LETHAL WEAPON IV, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS) play the unforgettable lead roles in a powerful, widely acclaimed cinematic triumph from Jonathan Demme -- the Academy Award(R)-winning director of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. On a difficult journey to find freedom, Sethe (Winfrey) is constantly confronted by the secrets that have haunted her for years. Then, an old friend from out of her past (Glover) unexpectedly reenters her life. With his help, Sethe may finally be able to rediscover who she is and regain her lost sense of hope. Also featuring outstanding performances from Thandie Newton (GRIDLOCK'D) and Lisa Gay Hamilton (TV's THE PRACTICE) -- you'll agree with critics everywhere who've hailed this landmark adaptation of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as one of the year's finest films!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5668 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-05-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 171 minutes

Amazon.com
This layered film, a labor of love from director Jonathan Demme and star Oprah Winfrey, covers a lot of turf in its nearly three-hour running time. Part slavery fable, part mother-daughter tale, part ghost story, Beloved demands an audience's full attention from its dramatic, slightly bewildering opening, when a family dog comes down on the wrong side of some angry, unseen force. But Demme and his talented cast provide an unforgettable payoff for those who surrender.

The film traces the life of Sethe (played in her middle years by Winfrey), a former slave who has rebuilt what seems to be a peaceful, productive life in Ohio. Yet through chilling, sparing use of flashback, Demme slowly unveils, as does the Toni Morrison masterpiece on which the film is based, the horrors of Sethe's former life, and the terrible event that led to the haunting of Sethe's home.

While the horrors of slavery and the bloody event in Sethe's family leave undeniable impressions, the film's brilliance is also evidenced in smaller, equally satisfying ways. Rachel Portman's spiritual-influenced score is as uplifting as it is haunting, and the glimpses of the post-slavery African American world--as with a simple family outing to a local carnival, or a ladies' sewing-and-gospel circle--make this a treat for the intellect as well as the heart. The members of the cast, especially Kimberly Elise as Sethe's struggling daughter and Thandie Newton as the mysterious title character, are supremely affecting. --Anne Hurley

From The New Yorker
One of the more high-minded and painful follies of recent years. Toni Morrison's celebrated 1987 novel "Beloved"-difficult, allusive, and filled with ghosts-is probably unadaptable, but Oprah Winfrey, with director Jonathan Demme in tow, went ahead with the project after eleven years of discouragement. Oprah plays Sethe, the former slave who, in 1873, lives in an Ohio farmhouse with her teen-age daughter, Denver (Kimberly Elise), her old friend and new lover Paul D (Danny Glover), and the ghost of the daughter she killed long ago when the girl was about to be retaken into slavery. The ghost, at first an unseen presence, smashes crockery to the floor, then appears as a beautiful young woman (Thandie Newton) who growls and talks very, very slowly. The movie would seem to be completely misconceived: rather than dramatizing the moral condition of people burdened by an unspeakable past, it dramatizes the domestic problems of living with a spirit-demon. For most of the hundred and seventy-four minutes we are stuck inside that farmhouse, and when the filmmakers do cut back to complicated events occurring earlier (during the slave years) we can't always tell what's going on. But there are moments of weirdly poetic natural beauty and also some wonderful actresses-Kessia Kordelle as a half-mad runaway white girl who helps deliver Sethe's baby in the woods, and Beah Richards, who shakes and shouts as the elderly preacher Baby Suggs and momentarily brings the show to life. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Despised
Im glad to see that Im not the only one who doesnt like this slop. People have a peculiar habit of embracing a movie because Oprah Lewinsky's name attached to it. The setting of the movie takes place after slavery. The whole thing is about Oprah(whose character name I forgot) murders two of her children during slavery so that the slavemaster wouldnt put her children in slavery. She kills one of them by bashing the baby's head against a wall and she slashes the throat of the other child. The child who neck got slashed returns later(played by Thandie Newton) to haunt her mother and makes her life a living hell. The movie has every sick element you can think of: bestiality, public urination(did we really need to see Bloprah pissing in public?), incest(Danny Glover's character literally banged "Beloved") etc. The acting is sloppy, and the movie is very dull plus Beloved's antics get annoying real quick. I'll admit that I got a cheap laugh at her drooling and talking like the little boy from The Shining(you know the one who says REDRUM every 5 seconds) but she is still a pain and Hoeprah's acting was pretty weak too. Even the talented Danny Glover part in this movie was sad. The whole movie makes little sense and you shouldnt even bother wasting time watching it. I was bored out of my skull when I viewed it in its entirety at my sister's house up in Boston. After watching it, I vowed to never get that bored again!
Two thumbs way down.

Baby Suggs Holy
Well I've read many of the reviews here and the positive ones express much of what I feel...
but I wanted to mention Grandma Suggs.
I have read the book so I know her sermon in the forest is slightly different and a little longer than in the movie...but the movie version moves me to tears every time.
I have gotten the movie out just to watch the sermon...it is split into 3 parts dispersed into different scenes.
The last of the sermon is at the end of the movie...

I don't remember the exact words in this moment but it's something like


"and the beat...beat of your heart..
love it
love your heart.................
...........this is the prize...
amen....
this is the prize..."

I bust out crying tears of gratitude every time. I just love the actress that plays Baby Suggs...soooo much.

"lay down your sword and sheild Sethe...study war no more"

This story is specific to the burden, horror and human outrage of slavery, but it is also metaphor for every other travesty humans inflict upon each other...and our incredible will to survive, to love, to lift ourselves up...and to help one another through it all....

Study war no more...

This COULD have been a truly great film!
The purpose of screenwriters who adapt a novel is to make the viewer NOT have to read the novel in order to understand the film! That said, I have watched BELOVED several times since it's theatrical release in 1998. At that time I thought that I would NEVER revisit this nearly three hour debacle. There is SO much to admire about this film; the acting is first-rate;the Rachel Portman soundtrack is positively one of if not her best;the cinematography of Fuj Sakimoto is outstanding.........but something still is lost somewhere in the translation of Toni Morrison's novel either in the screenplay or the editing that makes this an extremely difficult movie to follow. There are SO many stories going on in this film that it is hard to know just where to "hang your hat." It is a story of slavery, of women's strength, of supernatural/spirituality, of a daughter's needs/jealousy,there are ghosts, there is a certain weirdness that,...well......YIKES!!!....how much more needs to be crammed in to make this film make sense...or more senseless??? Believe me, I admire much about the scope of this film, but it has serious problems that should have been fixed. Perhaps the "labor of love" that Oprah and Demme felt for the book only clouded their judgment in the final product.The film is sprawling and loses all center focus. A film and a screenplay need to stand on their own WITHOUT forcing a viewer to read the book OR read other reviews in order to totally understand what they just saw!!! This is where BELOVED fails miserably.What you walk away with is ONLY what you can piece together (or think you can piece together!). I still watch this film for all of it's beauty and yet still come away with a certain emptiness that mourns the loss of what could have been a truly great film! I genuinely wish that I could have given it 5 stars!