- Nate Parker and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond the Lights
There was a great crowd at the preview screening of Beyond the Lights that I attended earlier this month. (Not since July—when the the Music Box Theatre presented It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in its 70-millimeter road show version—had I seen an audience respond so enthusiastically to a nonviolent movie.) For many releases, movie studios forgo traditional press screenings and preview the films for audiences made up of critics as well as noncritics, with the latter group usually outnumbering the former by a wide margin. The aim, I presume, is to make critics recognize how these movies play with a popular audience (and write reviews accordingly). In these cases I try to stay true to my own opinion, for whatever it’s worth, and not be influenced by the crowd. But Beyond the Lights triggered such an exceptionally positive response in the audience that I felt I had to take it into consideration.
- Mbatha-Raw and Richard Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly) in Beyond the Lights
The characters’ spiritual growth serves to deepen Prince-Bythewood’s condemnation of the cynical world they inhabit. This condemnation is especially fierce during one of the movie’s emotional climaxes. About halfway into Lights, Noni and Kid Culprit perform their latest single at the BET Awards, feigning at foreplay on a set made to resemble a sleazy motel bedroom. (Their publicists have created the impression that they’re a couple offstage as well as on—another instance of Noni’s intimate life being controlled by others.) Kaz, watching the performance from offstage, rushes to Noni’s defense when Kid Culprit humiliates her and pretends to make it look like part of the act. The crowd goes wild—so did the one I was sitting with—as our heroes damage their careers but confirm their love for each other.
