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Beulah Land
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by Sony
Sales Rank: 7837
Price: $9.99
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Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 03/25/2008 Run time: 281 minutes Rating: Nr
Viewer Reviews
Personally, I was disappointed. I won't even comment on the fact that the primary actors scarcely age 5 minutes over a period of 25 years. More important is the fact that the acting is uneven and many of the 'southern' accents syrupy and forced. I also thought that the film dragged in many places. Also, quite unforunately, the story and sets parallel 'Gone with the Wind'. The setting is even in Georgia and we see virtually the same fires, crippled soldiers and escaping civilians. There's even an evil ex-overseer trying to buy the stricken plantation. The problem is that 'Beulah Land' isn't nearly so good.
I gave the film 3 stars, though, based on the complexity the film depicted in the relationship between slaves and slave-holders. It was a love-hate relationship with probably more love than hate. There was something like interracial harmony but with an undercurrent of discontent. Paternalism was rife and when the Yankee artist asks the mistress of the plantation why she won't free her slaves, the woman answers...'but what will become of them?'
Southern culture reckoned that blacks couldn't care for themselves and therefore there was little alternative but to continue a troubled system. Yes, there was also fear that 'freed' slaves would turn on their previous masters. Emancipation occurred and the Federal Government, in all too many instances, set itself up as the greatest plantation master of all because, after all... 'What will become of them?' It is an ironic and fearful thing that racial relations in the U.S.A. have become increasingly strained since the early Civil Rights Era. There has been true progress in the social and economic status of blacks but...in my humble opinion...either despite of because of this progress interracial relationships are worse now than at any time in the past.
Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--'Skull Rack' and 'Hummingbird God'--on the Conquest of Mexico
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Beulah Land
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