HALLE BERRY

VICTIMS STORIES TOLD WITH SWEEPING RANGE OF TALENTED BLACK ACTOR

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The victims of social injustice seldom have their stories told on the silver screen. More often than not, the heroes that save them from further trauma become the main protagonists in a big screen adaptation of the real life events.

This superhero worship reflects the systemic need for an individual savior when the existing institutional safeguards are insufficient. But looking elsewhere for salvation may offer less opportunity for redemption.

Halle Berry provides the exception, often playing the victim even when cast as a superhero.

The talented actor from Cleveland, Ohio began her film career in one of a series of culturally iconic films produced and directed by Spike Lee.

Jungle fever (1991) has a star studded ensemble cast that includes, Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciora, Spike Lee, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Samuel L. Jackson, John Torturro, Frank Vincent and Tim Robbins.

Lee branded an audience by producing, directing and often starring in films that spoke directly to the under popularized black culture in America and New York City.

For Berry, that film role in front of Spike Lee’s niche camera lens was just the first of many film projects that challenged racial stereotypes and systemic bias against victims and the victimization of women, single mothers and Black Americans in popular culture.

In Losing Isaiah (1995), Berry plays a single mother whose new born baby is taken because of her drug addiction to crack cocaine. Khaila must fight the white adoptive parents in a custody battle for a child she had abandoned. Jessica Lang and David Strathairn co-star as the adoptive parents of the young black boy.

After a decade of hard work, Berry hits her stride with a flourishing of acting art in three films that would define her career.

In X-Men (2000), this Marvel Comic franchise film depicts the victims of social injustice as superheroes with special powers that have made them social outcasts. Patrick Stewart’s character has telepathic powers; Hugh Jackman’s character has a steel skeleton; James Marsden has eyes with the fire of the sun; and Halle Berry is Storm.

Storm can summon the weather to fight the worst of villains, but the general gist is that Storm’s superpower is only used as a last resort to prevent the team of mutant avengers from becoming entrenched as victims of injustice.

Berry has had a recurring role in the X-Men franchise films over the last two decades.

Berry then plays Ginger in the anti-terrorism, gone sideways film, Swordfish (2001).

John Travolta stars as the leader of a black ops team that must recover agency funds to finance a war of vengeance on international terror.

Then Black America is depicted as a victim of misfortune in Monster’s Ball (2001). Berry portrays single mother, Leticia Musgrove, who must find her way without her husband. Sean Diddy Combs plays Berry’s husband, Lawrence, who is on his last days on death row trying to explain to his son to choose the right path in life.

Leticia musters on after her husband’s execution through a cluster of traumatic events.

Berry shows how a twist of fate and a bit of kindness from a stranger prevents her character from drowning in a rainstorm of social injustice.

Billy Bob Thornton co-stars as Hank, the personification of the duality of American injustice. Hank is a racist and an abusive patriarch who shows little or no remorse for his social crimes. Heath Ledger co-stars as Hank’s son, Sonny. And Hank and Sonny are prison guards for death row where Leticia’s husband, Lawrence, is executed.

Berry takes the narrative through several twists of fate on her way to an Oscar winning performance for the role.

Leticia is portrayed as something more than a caricature of black marginalization in a white power America. Berry shows how, despite her best efforts, poverty and crime has fragmented Leticia’s life into tiny bits of chocolate and mini-bar drinks.

Monster Ball was met with such critical acclaim that only the popularity of a secret agent role could be next in the talented actor’s film career.

Jinx Johnson is an American secret agent competing for screen time with James Bond in the James Bond franchise film, Die Another Day (2002).  Pierce Brosnan plays Bond.

To Bond’s pleasant surprise, Jinx appears out of the warm ocean currents to share the Cuban narrative.

The pair of spies get along well because they have independent targets. Jinx advances the underworld war against deep below the grid criminals the spy world has engaged with to prevent the further victimization of society, while Bond chases a North Korean arms dealer whose failed arm sale led to the British Secret Agent’s torture in a military prison.

Eventually, Jinx and Bond join forces to destroy an oligarch’s icy lair.

Berry shows great acting talent with a range of emotions and various fragile psychological states normally associated with victims of social injustice. Berry can scream and cry, and look chronically depressed, but she can also act her character through various thought processes on the way to redemption.

This talent range as an actor is highlighted in a series of psychodrama films.

The film Gothika (2003) shows how a gifted psychiatrist falls victim to her own therapy as the world of the deep subconscious haunts the psychiatric hospital.

The narrative explores the systemic problems in treating the mentally ill, and how treatment by an institution often further stigmatizes people. The patients are shown as fragments of society to which anyone at anytime can fall victim.

Berry explores mental health issues again in a gifted performance as a psychiatric patient with multiple personalities in Frankie & Alice (2010).

Frankie works as a GoGo Dancer as her alter-ego begins to act up more and more until she finds herself in trouble with law enforcement officials.

Director Geoffrey Sax uses clever camera angles, lighting and make-up to make Berry look different in appearance for each different multiple-personality.

Berry is able to transition from one distinct personality to another in the same scene, which is something many actors have difficulty accomplishing from film to film, let alone from scene to scene.

The victim/hero and hero/victim theme has compelled Berry’s Hollywood career because few other actors are capable of such a range in acting for their film art. In the process, the actor raises awareness about the social justice issues so entrenched in society as to prevent people from advancing within their class and from poverty to the middle class of America.