VIDEO VIEWS by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

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VIDEO VIEWS by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

“Magic Love”

Prof. Iverson White's 'Magic Love' Will Weave a Spell on You

by Kevin J. Walker

http://cinemaviews.tripod.com

walkernet@excite.com

"Magic Love" first premiered in Milwaukee at the Performing Arts Center in 1999. The locally produced film deals with themes of reincarnation, cultural awareness vs. assimilation, marital fidelity and Timeless Love.

With the widespread interest in African American themed movies these days the film "Magic Love," with some minimal editing and revisions, may be able to seize onto this cinematic boom in a time of DVD players that cost as low as $29.95.

“Magic Love” concerns the search of a man for his lost love that endures for over 200 years after the two were separated during the European Slave Trade and the infamous Middle Passage in the late 1700s. Nyami was conceived by magic, and is of virgin birth through the intercession of his sorcerer father.

The son has formidable powers, and to punish him for his arrogance the gods cursed him with the intermittent knowledge of his former lives, and with impotence. (The idea of making a film featuring a Black man suffering from impotence is a novel one by itself!)

The gods themselves also kept Nyami's/Jean-Claude's misery index high by having his beloved Cosi's spirit play hopscotch around the new land they've been brought to, and with no prior knowledge of her lives nor of this strange but somehow appealing man who has insinuated himself into her life.

When the now-wealthy and magically powerful Witch Doctor now renamed “Jean Claude” finally tracks Cosi down they are both thirtysomething, but she is a Middle-class psychologist, and married.

So, the resourceful Jean Claude becomes one of her patients, complaining that he thinks he's going insane -- he believes he has had past lives, and is being punished by the gods!

Laura Williams plays present day Dr. Rachael Jamison. John Jelks is Jean Claude / Nyami, and they have younger incarnations in Aletha Biles as the teenage Cosi, and Ola Benson as the young hot-headed Nyami who has trouble controlling his powers when the treachery of some of his tribal rivals becomes too much to bear.

The African tribal scenes for “Magic Love” were shot around Milwaukee County parks, and co-stars former WISN Channel 12 personality Shaun Robinson, now seen on the syndicated “Access: Hollywood.”

Rueben Harpole, Michael Lisana Gram, and community theatre actors Lee Palmer, Adolphus Ward and Binny Cannon rounded out the cast. There were some scenes shot around New Orleans, but Milwaukeeans will see much that they recognize around the community, as in the films produced by Cecil Woodson III including “Straight Hustl’n,” soon to be reviewed here.

I don’t know why some directors substitute New Orleans for Milwaukee in films. I’ve been down there and I don’t see it, except maybe for the mutual poverty that a recent study pointed out, and this was pre-Katrina catastrophe. Bernie Mac’s “Mr. 3000” Milwaukee scenes was shot there too. That film will be featured on “Play Ball!” the collection of baseball movies. But I digress:

The interplay of the increasingly estranged husband and wife was an unexpected jewel to be found in “Magic Love” as their already wounded and crumbling marriage is hastened by the arrival of the mysterious Jean Claude. The bumbling, backfiring efforts by the emotionally blind Reverend Jamison to hold onto a wife that doesn't want to stay tears at your heart even while inside you root for the lovers to come together.

"I'm your husband!" the good Rev. shouts as he sees his bewildered wife's personality change and she gets increasingly Africentric in her dress and manners, even talking African languages in her sleep as the memory of Cosi starts to seep in.

"And when I see you change your hairstyle, dance around in your underwear and watch you being seduced by an incubus it is my business!!" The subthemes of culturally unconscious Buppies and Paganism versus Christianity were also spice for the film. Jelks as Jean Claude is the standout of the cast, radiating the quiet, dignified, panther-like strength without bluster the role called for.

A locally made film automatically gets points from this Brewtown film critic, and “Magic Love” deserves accolades but it was not without some glaring flaws, even under the wider and more lenient critical guidelines afforded independent films.

Cheerfully, these can be easily addressed without resorting to drastic measures, such as having the soundtrack recut to narrate certain scenes as bridges. The songtrack shouldn't be touched though; for the World Music is excellent and appropriate. However there was an infuriatingly audible scratched record that was used instead of a master tape at one point in the movie, an unforgivable lapse since $100,000 isn't exactly peanuts, you know.

The execution of the movie could have been different, as well as the structure and chronological sequence. The audience shouldn't have to wait until the rear part of the movie to discover some essential elements that would have made the rest of the movie clear if they'd known them up front.

For example, there was no compelling reason why some of the African segments on Cosi and Nyami's separation couldn't have been shown before the present era Claude makes his appearance. It would have spared needless confusion and shown his motivations better. Only after seeing the movie on both nights of its premiere was some of my confusion cleared up.

Also, the continuity of "“Magic Love” was jumpy, with some necessary establishing shots absent, and there were times when I couldn't keep track of the characters or eras. In a film with themes of Reincarnation and consciousness-time traveling, this is a serious shortcoming that undermines enjoyment of the film.

For example, one of Nyami's incarnations is a wizened old black man being consumed by cancer before he can complete his search for his soul mate. We don't know what era he's in, and it could easily have been accomplished by his narration, or the simple and time-honoured cinematic trick by showing a period automobile, or newspaper with the headline "Truman Fires MacArthur"; "Pacific War Front Casualties Mount" , "Cuban Missile Crisis Builds," or 'King is Slain in Memphis.” This wouldn’t have cost nmore than a half second of film stock, and tricks like these at are learned early by independent filmmakers on a constrained budget. This I know.

"Magic Love" contains the seed of a good cinematic idea, and with some more editing, added narration, and perhaps the insertion of a few more establishing scenes this would be a film of commercial theatre exhibition quality, not to speak of the after market DVD sales to travel, cable and public televsion. Did you know that they played movies on long-haul Amtrak train routes?

Scores of local actors and members of the arts community made their contribution to the $100,000 movie made by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor Iverson White, either as actors or with artifacts to make the settings have the ring of authenticity.

Visual artist Gerald Duane Coleman and his wife, dollmaker Sharon Abston of the Harambee Trading and Biscuit Company loaned African walking sticks, spears and ceremonial sitting stools they brought back from their travels, while Coleman's artwork can be seen on the walls of some of the homes and offices in the movie.

“Magic Love’s” premiere was sponsored in part by Colorlines magazine and the Strive Foundation, which under the leadership of the brothers Johnson -- Matthew and Jerry -- has catapulted to the leadership in community arts presentation by earlier bringing to Milwaukee the play "Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care" for a multiple day run.

The fuse the Johnsons lit has created Strive Media Institute’s young cadre and the nationally circulated "Gumbo" and "Ya Heard" magazines. --KJW