The Secret Life of Bees (2008)
Director Gina Prince Blythewood
Written by Gina Prince Blythewood
Starring Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys Jennifer Russell, Sophie Okenedo, Paul Bettany
Release Date October 17th, 2008
Published October 16th, 2008
The Secret Life of Bees is one of the most manipulative movies ever made. It takes lovable little Dakota Fanning, she of the apple cheeks and blond curls, and has her utter lines about being unlovable and never knowing her mom. Then, she is given a picture of her late, dead, mother holding her when she is a baby.
If you can get through these scenes without bawling like a baby you are a better man than me. Yes, The Secret Life of Bees is Machiavellian in it's pushy way but my heart did ache for this little girl and yes, I did cry. In an early 1960's I'm sure of someone's memory, if not exactly the collective historical memory, a little girl named Lily (Dakota Fanning) is running away from her bullying father (Paul Bettany). With her caretaker Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) in tow, Lilly makes her way to a small town in South Carolina where a memory of her mother exists.
A scrap of paper with a black Mother Mary on it leads Lilly and Rosaleen to a bright pink house where three sisters, August (Queen Latifah), June (Alicia Keyes) and May (Sophie Okenedo), live in a bright make a very good living cultivating and selling honey. Lilly's mother indeed has a lingering presence here and though she tries to be a stranger, August knows the little girl isn't here by accident. Running parallel to Lilly's journey are the racial politics of the early 1960's. June spends her time registering voters while Rosaleen is beaten up for trying to register.
The racial politics get only a blush, the focus of director Gina Prince Blythewood's story remains focused on Lilly and her journey toward accepting her tragic past and the role of her mother in her life all too briefly. In sticking to this story, Blythewood is blessed with Fanning's winning innocence and Queen Latifah's comforting motherly presence. The scenes between Latifah and Fanning are charged with joy and sadness and love that permeates the whole production of The Secret Life of Bees. The film radiates warmth and good feelings, pausing only briefly to acknowledge the ugliness of the time period.
Many will fault The Secret Life Of Bees for not taking more care to describe the challenges of the timeperiod. Many of those criticisms will likely fall on the character of May played by Sophie Okenedo. Her character provides shorthand for dealing with the sadness of the times. It's a cheat, there is no denying it, but I willingly looked past it toward what is very good about The Secret Life of Bees because what is good, is often very good.
And that good comes from Latifah and Fanning whose warm glow engulfs the audience and allows them and us to forget about all of the ugliness in the world, then and now, for just a little while. Yes, the moments are manipulative but they are manipulative in ways that work. I cried. I never cry. That tells me all I need to know about the effectiveness of The Secret Life of Bees.
