Alice (2022 film)
R 2022 ‧ Drama/Thriller ‧ 1h 38m
Limited Theaters: March 18, 2022
- Rating: R (Some Violence and Language)
- Genre: Mystery & Thriller, Drama
- Director: Krystin Ver Linden
- Stars: KeKe Palmer, Common, Sinqua Walls Johnny Lee Miller, Gaius Charles, Alicia Witt
Synopsis of the film “Alice”: Alice, an enslaved person yearning for freedom on a Georgia plantation, escapes through the woods and stumbles through time into the year 1973. After she meets a disillusioned political activist, played by Common, she confronts the lies that kept her enslaved.
The film is most certainly based on true events inspired by Mae Miller’s family. From accounts that were reported by Miller, her family was forced to pick cotton, clean house, and milk cows—all without being paid—under threat of whippings, rape, and even death. They were passed from white family to white family, their condition never improving.
Wait, you find this hard to believe? Think again. The term is called “peonage,” an illegal practice that flourished in the rural South after slavery was abolished in 1865 and lasted,, until as recently as the 1960s. Under peonage, blacks were forced to work off debts, real or imagined, with free labor under the same types of violent coercion as slavery. In contrast with the more common arrangement known as sharecropping, peons weren’t paid and couldn’t move from the land without permission. And YES, they were cut off from society.
To see first what this family suffered and the games, better lies that were told to this family for decades is just unimaginable. The sad thing is they were not the only family.
This is without question about enslavement on so many levels: White Americans, who to this day want to go back to this way of living/thinking, the enslavement of other cultures, and the disrespect that some blacks try to pass down to others and treating them they way white Americans treat us, visual Alice captures the enslavement of the Black Woman when compared with today from the beauty and strength of being black to now becoming something that is not who they are as Strong Black Women. The messages are strong and clear. The question is, are we paying attention?
This is the breakout performance for KeKe Palmer and that is saying a lot for a talented young lady who has done it all from acting, writing, singing, performing and now adding Executive Producer to her Title as she just wasn’t acting in this film she was invested so as to get the message out. Kudos to Common as well who was Executive Producer as well.
The soundtrack is the most Soulful from a movie standpoint in a long time. Strong 70’s Black movement music. That music had a message and passion. “Alice” is a highly educational and conversational movie that can be dissected and discussed on so many levels, especially in this racially charged climate that we live in.
