Nella Larsen – My Own RE:public

Shades of the past

As I said I would here, to provide some company through the lonely nights of winter, I have restarted my lapsed Netflix account. And, Rebecca Hall’s film adaptation of Nella Larsen’s Passing was indeed one of my first treats unto myself.

There have been any number of reviews around the place in the last month or so, but I particularly like this one from Imani Perry for Harper’s Bazaar. Amongst other things, it defends the film against some of the criticism of casting. Perry’s counter argument in some ways presumes the immediate reaction that I too had; that is, it a stretch to imagine that either Tessa Thompson (who plays Irene) or Ruth Negga (as Claire) could have got away with passing as white in 1920’s America. But on reflection, I get the point Perry makes. Perhaps only the obviousness of the performers Blackness, allows the viewer to embrace the Black gaze and to, for instance, imagine the risk Irene is taking when she seeks refuge from the sweltering day in that ritzy hotel restaurant, or to contemplate the nerve and concentration required in Claire’s deception of her racist husband. In both cases the tension is tangible, and the player’s gestures and the subtle movements of camera and lighting enhance the atmosphere of a shared experience.

Like Perry, I was very much convinced by Rebecca Hall’s artistic decision to shoot Passing in black-and-white. Monochromatic mixes to various degrees have become not uncommon in contemporary film and photography; so much so, that one wonders sometimes to what end – to seduce with misplaced nostalgia, to just kind of “look old”? But here, it makes sense in two very important ways: realistically, in terms of the period in which the story is set and symbolically for the stark opposites and all the grey areas in-between suggested by the tonality. And, in both these cases, conjured is powerful imagery of America’s social and racial divide – then and now. The ‘look’ is completed by an intelligent cinematography that follows and gently brushes the characters; there is a blurriness around the edges that blends intimacy and ambiguity – lives and situations not quite focused, out of reach.

In passing…

may I remind myself to reactivate my paused Netflix account! My morning peruse of The New York Times alerts me to the coming soon (Nov. 10) of Rebecca Hall’s adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing which I wrote about at the beginning of the year.

In her excellent NYT piece, Alexandra Kleeman not only offers a wonderful portrait of Rebecca Hall – the privileged and complicated biography that so informed her film making, the difficulties of financing and maintaining her artistic integrity – but also revisits her own first encounters with Larsen’s novel and reflects upon her own multi-racial heritage. Kleeman’s appreciation of the monochromatic aesthetic and the grey areas in-between where truth resides is about the best thing about film I have read in a long time.

Unbeknownst to me in the months since the film was previewed at Sundance, there has been an enormous amount of banter, especially surrounding the social and historical phenomena of “passing” and how it should be portrayed, and the various degrees of “colorism” that remain prevalent in society and reflected in Hollywood (or vice versa!), and the casting choices that are (or are not) made accordingly.

Surely, I will have more to say after seeing Hall’s film.

When Black is (not) white

“Passing” by Nella Larsen

With the success of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half last year (which I wrote about here), it could hardly surprise that Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel would resurface and be talked about again, and therefore appropriate that Bennett be at the centre of this T Book Club event.

And here is Bennett’s accompanying essay, which exacerbates on some of the topics that arose in the conversation, and introduces new ones.

Not just about Passing, Brit Bennett also speaks on the person Nella Larsen, beyond the writer, and the complicated paths her life took. After years of obscurity – the NYT famously overlooked her death in 1964 – Larson was rediscovered by feminist academics during the 1970s, and given place amongst the (mostly male) Harlem Renaissance. Interest in Larsen has been sustained through the ensuing years, including what Darryl Pinckney calls a definitive biography in 2006 by George Hutchinson, which he reviewed at The Nation upon publication. I mention the biographical information (via Pinckney and Wiki) only because, it seems to me, the oddness – or, the inconsistencies – of Larson’s life are not dissimilar to those to be discerned in the novel.

Three African American women in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, ca. 1925

But, that is the thing with the unreliable; it titillates, seduces and ultimately leaves –has to leave – some things unresolved. And so it is with the voice of Nella Larsen speaking to us through Irene Redfield. I recall Brit Bennett mentioning Irene’s world to be a rare example of a historical depiction of middle-class Black America, and it is this term “middle-class” that perplexes me; but that is generally so, for its definition is very dependent upon context – in place and in time – and neither being American nor clear on the historical demographics of New York, I may have a different understanding of a socio-economic scale. And so I am left to be wowed at what a middle-class that must have been in Harlem in the 1920s! The Redfieds for instance: doctor, wife; juggling social calendar and committees; entertaining and being entertained by literary luminaries; trips abroad, private schools; upstairs, downstairs; separate bedrooms (which I mention because of the spatial factor – what it says about the relationship between Irene and Brian is another matter!); housemaid, cook. Many of these are attributes I find difficult to relate to the middle-classes – somewhat too uppity, to my mind! Is the Harlem of her novel that in which Nella Larsen lived, the society to which she aspired? Or has she over-imagined both?