THE LONG WALK HOME - 1990
RATED - PG for some language and some non-graphic violence toward African-Americans.
RATINGS - 41 Amazon (4.5/5), 870 IMDB (7.2/10), 82,715 Netflix (3.8/5), Roger Ebert (3.5/4).
STARRING - Whoopi Goldberg, Sissy Spacek.
THEMES - Racial discrimination, non-violent protest, loyalty, family, civil rights.
STORY - It's 1955 in Montgomery and the Rosa Parks incident has precipitated the bus strike by African-Americans against the City of Montgomery. The film BOYCOTT does an excellent job of telling the overall story of the strike and the people organizing it. THE LONG WALK HOME is the story of two people directly involved in the strike. No one thought it would go on for over a year. Most African-Americans relied on public transportation for getting to work and Odessa Cotter (Goldberg), who worked as a domestic in the home of Miriam Thompson (Spacek), paid her fare in the front of the bus and got off to enter and sit in the back of the bus to ride the 9 miles each way to the Thompson home. The Thompsons were upper middle class socialites whose lives centered around the Country Club, entertaining, and Norman Thompson's successful real estate development business. Miriam, without telling her very segregationist husband, initially picks up Dessa a couple times a week, more for her own benefit than Dessa's but as the strike wears on and it becomes more and more contentious, Miriam begins to understand the pain of the African-Americans and puts her marriage and physical safety on the line by getting involved in driving Dessa back and forth as well as driving for the car pool. Goldberg does a great job of restraining her usual overpowering personality in this film so that you really feel the pain of walking 9 miles each way only to come home and do all over what you've been doing at work all day. Even if you know the story of the boycott this is worth watching to better understand how it played out at the individual level for both whites and blacks. Another reminder of a very sad chapter in American history. Let us all pray that we never treat people as 'possessions' again and that we work to rid our world of racial discrimination wherever we find it. Lu G. for Lu's Reviews. 02/23/2008.
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