by Montgomery Jones

Have you ever held a story so close to your heart that the thought of describing it is almost intimidating?  I feel like my words will always come up short in my pursuit to articulate the importance of a film like Beyond the Lights.

I’m not a romance film buff in general so I had no desire to see Beyond the Lights, but I should have given it more credit based solely on the fact that it was directed and written by Gina Prince-Bythewood, director/writer of Love & Basketball and The Secret Life of Bees.  At my sister’s absolute insistence, I saw the movie with her. It was her third time and my first time seeing it.  One of my favorite things while watching it was how engrossed the first audience I saw it with was. The audience (of mostly black girls and women) was completely enthralled, because Beyond the Lights touched on things that not only undiscussed in other movies, but that we as a society out and out ignore.

The film introduces us to Noni Jean, a young British biracial girl with an extremely controlling white mother and no father in the picture.  Think stage mom times 100.  In the first scene we delve in to a topic that I am all too familiar with: hair.  As a biracial child I had enough hair for ten people, super thick and long.  Noni’s white mother doesn’t know how to do her hair, so she hires a stylist to show her to brush and style it.  When my family first moved to Michigan, both of my parents worked a lot so my (white) grandma was asked to do my hair after morning showers. Long story short, she didn’t want to brush all the way through because it hurt, and a huge knot formed, resulting in some 12 inches getting cut off.  For Ms. Prince-Bythewood to include a quick scene like that was so important for me. Non-black people doing little black girls’ hair is hard and it’s a narrative many are familiar with.

Noni’s story starts off in the late 90’s as a young Noni Jean sings Blackbird by Nina Simone in a talent show. Flash forward to now, and she is hyper sexualized up and coming pop star, “Noni”.  I have to say one aspect of this film that makes ring so true are the attention to details.  The authenticity of the music videos, award shows, magazine covers, even celebrity cameos all ring true.  It made this world that so many of us are familiar with from an outsider’s perspective, seem that much more real.

I am all about sexual liberation for women, but when women  so clearly are being forced to be sexual, it’s not liberation, it’s sexualization. Noni has an industry boyfriend, rapper Kid Culprit played by real life rapper Machine Gun Kelly.  Their relationship is based solely on Kid’s attraction to Noni and her mother’s insistence that Noni be in the relationship to elevate her fame. Noni has no say in this industry and she is propped up like a doll. When Noni meets Kaz, a police officer, she is contemplating suicide.  Kaz says that he “sees her” which is so incredibly powerful.  Afterwards her mother demands to know if it’s a “cry for help.” Noni says no,  and Macy harshly says,“good, cause look around you, you got nothing to cry about.” Associating any display of pain as ways to get attention and correlating wealth and happiness are all too frequent in real life, and Macy’s dismissiveness illustrates how alone Noni is.

Noni’s record label wants to drop her and says “suicide a’int sexy”–Noni is nothing but property to the record label. All of these offhanded comments and remarks add to an all too familiar dismissive tone that depressed and anxious people.  I suffer from anxiety and depression and while my parents are incredibly supportive I have felt flack from others that have commented that my life is “fine.”

In so many television shows and movies, depression is depicted as simply being sad and someone recognizing they are depressed and that’s it.  There’s no follow through and no updates.  In this story we see a follow through.  After the suicide attempt, Noni and Kaz go on a rollercoaster of an emotional relationship with push back from both of their parents (Kaz is on track to be a political superstar and Noni is not “first lady material” according to his father).  Kaz brings up the fact that she needs help again, much later on in the story.  Depression can be buried for moments of time but it never goes away.  Societally if you’re happy then you aren’t depressed, but Kaz doesn’t let it drop even when Noni is happy, and to me that’s one of the most important things about this film.  It’s an ongoing battle and can’t be fixed with money, fame, and sometimes even love won’t solve it completely.  The film reminds me of that The Great Gatsby quote, “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”Noni has hundreds of people around her daily, but she is completely alone and unseen.

At one point in the film Noni is actually assaulted, and with real life artists like Kesha and Lady Gaga’s recent allegations of sexual assault by higher ups in the music industry, not to mention people like Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, and Roman Polanski out in the world, a fictional highly publicized assault does not seem so fictional.

Beyond the Lights tackles heavy topics head on but manages to balance the heavy stuff with the love story. I love how multidimensional Kaz and Noni are–major props to Mbatha-Raw and Parker’s natural chemistry. As they begin to delve in to each other’s worlds a little bit more, Kaz discovers that Noni wants to write her own music, but says “no one cares what I have to say.”  Kaz replies that he’s listening.  I thought that there was a wonderful parallel to the line about him seeing her when she was hanging off the balcony, because all anyone wants in this world is to know they are seen and heard.

At one point, in the most vulnerable scenes in the movie, Noni removes her weave, makeup, and acrylic nails, exposing her vulnerable side. It’s such an intimate moment that I could not help but audibly sigh. She becomes a blank slate; she can choose how she looks, erasing all of the weights her career has essentially bestowed upon her.

After seeing this film a few times I considered myself a devoted fan, but it’s the interviews with Prince-Bythewood that left me feeling like a fanatic.  She fought so hard for this movie to come to be, to have a black male lead, to even have a relatively unknown actress like Mbatha-Raw to play Noni. At the end of the day people will look at this as a “black film” because those are categorized separately from mainstream films, and that breaks my heart.  This is a movie that deserves awards, but because it is a modern day tale about something so taboo, it’s been somewhat ignored.  When asked a question pertaining to this separation, Prince-Bythewood had this to say “It’s extremely tough, because I know what I saw in rehearsals and I know what I see in the film, and it is an incredible performance. And she should absolutely be in the conversation, but the perception of this kind of film will not give it the same respect as a period piece or a biopic. I hate that, but it’s not going to make me change my focus as a filmmaker.”

Beyond the Lights is playing at the Athena Film Festival in NYC and will be released on DVD February 24th.