Beyond the Lights

Watching “Beyond the Lights”, starring Nate Parker and Gugu Mbatha-Raw directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, I got exactly what I wanted and exactly what I excepted: a beautiful love story between two people of color who are complex and going through their own shit before/while they fell head over heels.

Noni is a character that reflects the current sexual exploitation of female pop stars and the decline of personal integrity and free will. Noni’s mother (Minnie Driver) is her manager and lives for her duties. She accepts the exploitation of her daughter as a mode of business. She does not see Noni as a daughter, but as a client.

Kaz is the moral opposite of Noni. A police officer and aspiring politician for the city of Los Angeles, Kaz sees the world through a filtered lens of right and wrong. His father (Danny Glover) lives vicariously through his son, believing that Kaz can achieve the status that he did not have the opportunity to achieve. 

Kaz and Noni’s introduction begins with Kaz, filling in for his friend as the security guard for Noni’s hotel room. Inside, we find Noni sitting on the balcony crying and deciding whether to jump and end her life. We see how fragile-minded Noni really is in this environment and how far Kaz takes his police work in order to get her on the floor safe. 

This launch into story is persisted with Noni falling back into the media swing by making him a public story and appointing him as her personal guard. They initially become tentative friends, with Kaz seeing how Noni lives her daily life surrounded by cameras, male lust and female envy and Noni asking him what is like to be able to care about normal problems, like the fear of planes.

When Noni initiates that they should get physical, Kaz also believes that they should be exclusive. Now, in a romantic story, there will be jealousy, but I have never seen jealousy portrayed in the earnest way Nat Parker exhibited. The conflicting emotions etched on his brow. His eyes indicating exactly what he wanted to hear, his actions showing what he didn’t.

Noni understands, through Kaz, that what she is forced to do by her mother and her label is not right and in one scene that I love, she is doing a performance with her media publicized  “boyfriend”. It is a very sexual R&B rap song, in which Noni was told that she take off the jacket she is wearing to reveal a sheer one-piece. When the dancers come forward to tug the jacket off, Noni holds it together, not letting them. 

The rapper (Machine Gun Kelly) follows the performance onto the prop bed, and even though Noni told him she didn’t want to continue their media charade, he proceeds to try to rip the jacket of her himself. In front of the audience! Kaz, who was watching this from backstage, runs to pry Noni from his grip. The rapper won’t let him leave with Noni shaken. He calls Noni a bitch, again in front of the crowd! And in front of the crowd, Kaz punches him in the face. To me, Kaz protected Noni’s honor, as a man should.

Afterward, both Kaz and Noni retreat from their stressors to Mexico. Noni: her mother and the press. Kaz: his father and his aspirations for his son. They have a beautiful interlude, accepting each other’s mind, body, and souls for who they are.

To be warned: There is sex material in this movie. The atmosphere, the music and the circumstances that led Noni and Kaz there together is so that you wish that it were happening to you. And the unearthing of Noni’s true beauty and newfound worth.

Noni’s mother finds them by way of the internet and arrives, convincing Noni to finish her album. Kaz wants her to give up the label and stay with him in Mexico. Noni disagrees and thinks she can change the label’s mind to make her own music. Kaz does not accept this and their fallout settles into an uncertainty in their love.

Noni is taken back to the people who showed that they wanted to her back but she was smarter now and in control of her future. She wants the label to produce and put her new song into her scheduled album. They flounder and disapprove. She realizes that they still wished manipulate her talent and her body, so she quits. When she also understands that her mother was behind it, she fires her mother as her manager as well.

She visits Kaz at his home and sees that he continues to take his father’s instruction and was on his way to a political meet and greet. She awkwardly tells him that he was right and how sorry she was to have not seen it earlier before she lost him. Still hurt and furiously weighing the options in his mind, Kaz speaks softly and with unhappiness that maybe it's time they let each other go. Disappointed, Noni acquiesces and leaves. 

Noni goes to London, where she is from but has never performed, to sing her new song. And guess who meets her backstage. Kaz confesses his love for her in a gigantic jumble of words furthered by jet lag. Reaffirmed, Noni reveals her long-hidden talent to the world and her new love.

Things people said about the movie that pissed me off:

·         Nat Parker and his big lips are… gorgeous and sexy. It does not matter. Any character can be sexualized in a sexual movie, as long as they matter to you and your romantic spirit. For me, I thought Gugu was too sexy but as the story progressed, Gugu became beautiful to me. But it only happen once I got to know her character!

·         Names are unimportant unless you give meaning and wait begin them. People in their reviews made fun of Kaz’s name, even when he explained it in the movie. A name has to be something you can shout and remember. (Kaz! Noni!)

Tips to a great traditional romantic movie:

 

·         Both characters have flawed parents and figures around them who expect them to give things that they can no longer give.

·         A contrived but acceptable introduction for the audience (whether comedic or traumatic) between the two romantic leads.

·         Each state a fear and help each other conquer that fear.

·         A palpable sexual tension.

·         An overall acceptance for better or for worse in face of adversity.

·         Followed by a period for the audience to feel that they need the character together to feel complete. 

·         An apology or remembrance of what they loved about each other and want each other back. 

·         Standing up to parents or the authorities.

·         And a final send off that makes the audience hope their love will live on after the movie.

Other recommendations:

“Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” - a Bollywood film starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. An 1995 Indian romantic drama film that is the greatest ever movie. In English, it means “The Brave-Hearted Will Take Away the Bride”, also widely known as DDLJ.