HBO and Showtime celebrate Black History Month
PUSSSYKATT
KEEP THE FAITH, BABY. Sunday night at 8, Showtime.
LUMUMBA. Tomorrow night at 10:05, HBO. Narrated in French, with English
subtitles.
As part of this weekend's Black History Month programming, both HBO and
Showtime offer biographical dramas about charismatic, unyielding men who rose
to political power, only to have it taken from them.
Showtime's "Keep the Faith, Baby" is the vastly superior offering — a
telemovie about Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the Harlem preacher who was the second
African-American elected to Congress.
HBO's "Lumumba" is a docudrama about Patrice Lumumba, who, like Powell, was a
political force in the 1960s. But Lumumba's power was exercised in Africa,
where he became the first prime minister of the newly independent Congo.
"Keep the Faith" is a drama that portrays its protagonist as complex and
flawed, and tells its story with humorous, human and even sexy interludes.
"Lumumba" is as humorless and unsexy as a drama can get, and portrays its hero
as more messianic than human.
The best thing about "Lumumba," starring Eriq Ebouaney, is that it tells an
unfamiliar story. But director and co-writer Raoul Peck tells it solemnly and
stiffly.
The film arrives, justifiably, without much promotion or expectation. (It
opened at New York's Film Forum last June.)
"Keep the Faith, Baby" is a more pleasant surprise. Harry Lennix is suitably
strong and sparkly as Powell. He embodies the man just as convincingly in his
later years, in selfexile on the island of Bimini, as he does as an angry young
man in Congress.
Vanessa Williams, as Powell's second wife, Hazel Scott, is given enough screen
time to humanize Powell while playing a forceful, glamorous and sexy person
herself. And Powell's determined efforts to support integration and his people
has the savvy young politician using everything from stubborn silence to
playful humor to get his points — and his bills — across.
Shortly after being sworn in to Congress in 1945, Powell integrated the
congressional dining room merely by walking in and sitting down. To further
infuriate a racist fellow congressman, Powell made a point of sitting next to
him wherever he was in the House chamber.
After having a frank discussion with President Harry Truman (Cedric Smith)
about discriminatory policies, Powell drafted an anti-discrimination rider that
was attached to many subsequent bills.
Powell's success record in the House, especially as chairman of the Education
and Labor Committee, was impressive — but his behavior outside of politics,
involving everything from misuse of travel vouchers to drinking and womanizing,
eventually had Congress accusing him of being unworthy of representing his
constituents.
Screenwriter Art Washington has Powell, in the last years of his life, visited
by an inquisitive young African-American reporter (played nicely by Russell
Hornsby), and frames the story in flashback. The journalist's tough questions
make Powell own up to his abrasiveness and excesses while simultaneously noting
with pride his many political achievements.
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