By Joel Katz, 2002.
Documentary.
Rating: 6/10, 9/10.
I consider myself a pretty emotionally detached person. Not really, but...well, read my review of A Clockwork Orange where I talk about how much fun it is to watch if you want to know what I mean. That said, there are a (very) few things that really get to me. (Long pause while I try to think of some.) Dancer In The Dark. Egon Schiele. "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday.
Way, way, way way way back in November (it’s now April, if you’re not reading this right after I write it), Joel Katz’s documentary about that get-to-meable song rolled on to Oberlin’s campus for what I think was its premier. So there I was, with bells on, fully anticipating getting the scoop on the whole world and writing the first review of it. Sadly, I’m a lazy bastard and I’m (lemme count) five months behind in my reviews, and as a result it’s been rearing its fantastic head all over PBS for weeks now.
So yeah, that’s what it is, is fantastic. Sadly, since I saw it five months ago and documentaries in particular have a tendency of slipping out of my mind rapidly, I don’t really remember why it was fantastic. I remember a shock when I found out that Abel Meeropol, who wrote the song, was the man who adopted the Rosenberg children after their parents were murdered by the government. Along those lines, I remember liking the parallel it drew—not coming on too strong, and certainly not belittling the horror of lynching as it was—between lynching and recent events like the deaths of Matthew Shepard and Amadou Diallo, which I in turn remember making me think of Lauryn Hill’s song "I Find It Hard To Say (Rebel)" on her unplugged album, which I think could be the "Strange Fruit" of our time if anyone listened to it. But beyond that uninformative information, I’m drawing a blank.
Worth seeing. If you’re me, worth seeing again. That’s what it boils down to.