The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Movie Review
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack
Henrietta Lacks is 1 of those people who greatly impacted your life and you don't even know her name. What'south fifty-fifty more fascinating about her story is that she didn't fifty-fifty know how much good she would exercise in the globe after she died. In 1951, after having five children, Lacks discovered that she had cervical cancer, from which she would pass away at a tragically immature age of 31. Without the noesis of Henrietta or her family, tissue from the tumor that killed her was taken from her body and essentially fabricated immortal at Johns Hopkins. For decades, scientists in that location had been trying to grow a cell line on which the medical industry could experiment in ways that they couldn't do with living people. Henrietta Lacks was the cardinal that unlocked the door, leading to decades of medical advancements, including developments in the treatment of polio, Parkinsons, influenza, leukemia, and many more. With the cells named HeLa, most of the globe had no thought that it was the biological property of a Virginia female parent who changed the world.
George C. Wolfe'southward "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," premiering on HBO tomorrow nighttime, tells Henrietta'southward (Renee Elise Goldsberry) story. Sorta. It besides tells the story of journalist Rebecca Skloot (Rose Byrne), the woman who spent a decade researching this foreign story and wrote the bestselling volume on which this movie is based. Sorta. It also tells the story of Deborah Lacks (Oprah Winfrey), Henrietta'south daughter, who has become somewhat obsessed and damaged past the saga of her mother and how little she feels like she knows virtually a woman who has somehow become the property of the globe. Whatever ane of these stories could have worked on their own, only the bad-mannered blending of all 3 doesn't work. Rebecca becomes little more than than an unnecessary sounding board for Deborah, who could have anchored the story on her own. And, worst of all, it feels similar we get to know the woman writing this tale more the person information technology's about. At 1 point, someone says "This story is crazy plenty for 3 books!" Which makes it both too much and not quite plenty for one film.
The Lacks family saga is an amazing one. Not just did Henrietta grow up a young mother without much to her proper noun, only her family unit tree developed fascinating subplots after her death. Deborah'southward obsession with her female parent makes her the natural leading lady of this story, but nosotros besides encounter the ambitious Zakariyya (Reg E. Cathey), a man hardened by a criminal lifestyle into which he might not have fallen if he knew more than nearly his mother. The entire Lacks family becomes bitter and angry over a system that essentially took part of a mother they never really got to know, without anyone's permission. They became downright paranoid about it, convinced both that John Hopkins had fabricated millions to which they were owed and fifty-fifty that they might have cloned Henrietta. Courtney B. Vance appears equally a slimy chaser who tries to accept advantage of the Lacks' family drama.
If information technology sounds like a lot of movie for 91 minutes, you lot're not wrong. In that location is a socially relevant subtext here about how easy information technology was for the medical industry to take advantage of minorities, and ofttimes for little reason at all, other than they could. Would Henrietta Lacks have given her cells for inquiry? Probably, but no one fifty-fifty asked. And John Hopkins would continue to deceive the Lacks family. Wolfe'due south moving picture seeks to humanize someone who became immortal. It takes someone who became huge in the world of science and shows us who she was, the life she led, and the family she left behind.
And then why isn't this her story? Nosotros see flashbacks to Henrietta, but Wolfe and his team chose to make this the story of a daughter "finding" her mother instead, and it truly feels like nosotros never actually find Henrietta as viewers. It's about a woman who never knew her mother, and so it feels like something that was given to the residuum of the world was stolen from her. That'south powerful drama, simply the storytelling approach here diffuses it. Nothing feels invested in long enough to register because the narrative is constantly jumping around, near as if information technology's scared there'south not plenty story here to comport a picture show.
Thank God for neat casting. Winfrey is typically fantastic, finding the emotional undercurrent of a child who merely wants to hold on to what she can when information technology comes to her mother. Cathey and Vance are spectacular in pocket-size roles. Just Byrne seems adrift, but that's a trouble of direction and writing. Typically underrated, she is sometimes downright distracting here, giving an overdone performance designed to exist the directly human being to the oddity of Deborah. As not bad as it is that Rebecca helped bring this story into the low-cal, her story is thin, and non only because it again feels like we're hearing the story of a minority family through the eyes of a white protagonist.
Henrietta Lacks was a mortal. She was a sis and mother who died way too young, and did more for the earth after she died than she e'er could take imagined. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" does its most proficient by bringing the full name back to HeLa. With such a unique, decades-long story, possibly it's merely appropriate that information technology's going to take more than one movie earlier nosotros really get to know her.
Brian Tallerico
Brian Tallerico is the Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television receiver, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Clan.
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017)
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