‘Passing’ – English Film (Comments)
Around the 1920s there was a consideration that the cross-bred people especially those who were born for a mixed parentage of Black and White were allowed to claim the race of their choice. How colorful is this?
Those who had lighter skin and blond hair were certified as ‘Pass’ to be considered as whites and accepted as one of them by the white community.
American federal law had gone berserk in these kinds of crazy approvals and I was awestruck to know this as late as yesterday.
Now in a scenario where two different women born for a black and a white pair play their roles where one looks black and the other has lighter skin and blond hair. One passes silently and the other remains to live as the underprivileged.
One who passes is now feeling nostalgic and wants to return to the boisterously joyful black community where she thinks she still belongs.
She enters into the other one’s life and pulls her husband by his groins.
She has a white boyfriend who was supposed to marry her without knowing that she is of black descent.
In a cross encounter where all the three show up, she dies in an accidental fall from a building.
Was it an accident, or was she killed? The onus is quickly dimmed out.
I’m bewildered to know the ‘fresh history’ content and wonder what was right or wrong with the blacks and the whites.
World on the other side has come across too many things, some good some bad, and some ugly.
They were all through in the making of a country to become the ‘land of immigrants and opportunities’.
As we could see that all of these were endured, it leaves me curious to know if the ‘Passing Program’ was only for women, or for Men too?
And then who would be known as a ’Mullato’?
What licensing was required for those born for a white and a Native American pair?
What about our naturally brown Indians begetting children of white descent there?
Will Jesus answer these questions from Bethlehem in Jerusalem or from a cave in Morocco?
It is hard to find such a colorful film, in black and white.
I loved the content.
But the film is so slow that for Christ’s sake, I cannot recommend it for all except for those ‘racial anthropologists’ who won’t be satisfied either.
The film has so much but misses out on the audience’s pulse.
–Srirangam Ramesh