| Episodes |
Did we say that Barbara Chase-Riboud made Sally Hemings visible for the first time? O, now Sally becomes REALLY visible. At minute 65 in this 1995 movie Sally jumps off the printed page and out of the shadows of history. We see her roll her eyes, dance the jig. We see her bedd'd and ever so slightly swell-bellied. If Callender could see her now! There she is in flesh and blood. Maybe it's true to say that historical figures really don't live till we see them on screen.
Well, what do you think? Is this the way that you imagined Sally, imagined Jefferson, imagined their relationship? Merchant and Ivory have done distinguished films (Room with a View, Howards End) prior to this one, often involving historical reconstruction. You are familiar with everything about the relationship and controversy they were. How do you feel they did here? What was their goal in dramatizing the relationship? Where did they stick to "facts," where invent and interpret? Do you see signs that the script was based in whole or in part on previous authors and works -- Brodie? Chase-Riboud? What kind of intervention into the construction of history occurs here? What haven't we seen before? Did anything surprise you? How does the film relate to the developing African American consciousness about the significance of the Jefferson-Hemings story?
