52 Films By Women: Compensation (1999)

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By Andrea Thompson

“Compensation” is the kind of boldly independent experimental film that makes me rage and moan at the long and productive career of an artist that wasn’t. You’d think I would somehow find better ways at coping with this, but one of the most bittersweet experiences I have as a writer is to watch and appreciate a beautiful film like this...and to know that the director wasn’t given much opportunity afterwards.

It’s not that director Zeinabu irene Davis hasn’t done other things, both before and since. But they’ve been few and far between, and she has not been granted the creative opportunities she clearly earned. Seriously, how many more times must I mourn? 

And this one feels more personal than most. The 1999 black and white film “Compensation” isn’t just a love letter to love, it’s an ode to Chicago, the city I reside in and one Davis clearly has a great affection for. It’s not just that the entire plot takes place there, it occurs during two different time periods, at the beginning and end of the twentieth century.

Both are seen through the eyes of two very different couples, and primarily follow two Black Deaf women, Malindy Brown and Malaika Brown, who find love with a hearing man, Arthur Jones and Nico Jones, respectively. Played by the same set of actors, Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks, both find their romances in danger thanks to the diseases of the day, tuberculosis and AIDS.

For this unique love story, Davis doesn’t just make fun, creative considerations for the Deaf community with her use of Silent Era title cards and vintage photos, both of ordinary people and activists, she portrays her non-hearing characters with a sensitivity rarely seen. We see this community through the eyes of the people within it, not by how they’re perceived by those who can hear, which, as “Compensation” reminds us, isn’t always positive. If we may dislike that some of Malaika’s friends disapprove of her dating a hearing person, we mostly understand why they do, even as Nico treats her with loving kindness and respect.

There’s less understanding and time spent in the past, which fills a bit like filler as time goes on, since the objections more revolve around Arthur, a recent arrival from the South as part of the Great Migration, being beneath the more educated Malindy. So it’s hardly surprising that Malaika and Nico steal the show while giving us a fun view of Chicago and Black culture with humor and a great sense of the city’s rhythms, while also flipping the switch on a whole lot of romantic tropes.

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Contrary to the usual way of suffering, saintly women catching TB, it’s the hardworking Arthur in the past who catches the very non-romanticized disease, while, unlike the most cinematic portrayals of AIDS, it’s Malaika who is HIV positive. It’s rare enough to see films address women living with HIV, but it’s even rarer to see a Black woman do so, let alone a Black Deaf woman who is seen as a complex character rather than a suffering one-dimensional caricature who’s in need of saving. 

That these women can’t always surmount the obstacles to their love is heartbreaking, but the most remarkable thing about “Compensation” is how love is always worth the risk, even if it may include a devastating fallout. 

Compensation is streaming on The Criterion Channel.

52 Films By Women: Eve's Bayou

By Andrea Thompson

Perception is everything, and “Eve's Bayou” is very aware of how the stories we tell our ourselves shape, and sometimes destroy, our lives. It seemed fitting that the first film I watched for Black History Month was also a delicately beautiful exploration of personal history.

It's no accident that many of the reviews and think pieces about “Eve's Bayou” also begin with the film's opening lines. They're thoughtful, insightful, and...startling, to say the least. “Memory is the selection of images, some elusive, other printed indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old.”

How and why would such a thing occur? It first seems unlikely, or even unthinkable, as such developments often do. In their prosperous 1960s Louisiana Creole community, Eve's family stands out, in all the right ways. Her father Louis (Samuel L. Jackson) is a prominent, respected doctor, with a beautiful, loving wife Roz (Lynn Whitfield). Eve also has two other siblings, the teenage Cisely (Meagan Good), who is clearly her father's favored child, and a younger brother, Poe (Jake Smollett).

But the facade comes crashing down when Eve accidentally witnesses her father having sex with another woman. At first, it seems as if Louis is able to smooth things over, but things deteriorate as Eve discovers more evidence of Louis's constant unfaithfulness. Cisely refuses to believe any of it, leading to more conflict between the sisters and Cisely and Roz. This conflict becomes less surprising as we learn more about both mother and daughter. 14-year-old Cisely is eager to grow up and embrace her womanhood, and she is her elegant mother in miniature. She idolizes her father the way Roz once did.

“When I first met Louis, I watched him set a boy's leg who had fallen out of a tree,” Roz muses. And I said to myself, here's a man who can fix things. He's a healer, he'll take care of me. So I leave my family, and I moved to this swamp, and I find out he's just a man.”

With such turbulence at home, Eve natually searches for a safe haven, which she finds with her aunt Mozelle (Debbi Morgan). Mozelle has the gift of sight, which allows her to see everyone's future but her own, with all three of the men she loved having died. Her abilities are unquestionably real, magic being a regular part of the film's unique setting. Not all of it is benevolent, and it is to the less benevolent forces that Eve turns to after Cisely reveals that Louis tried to molest her one night, deeply traumatizing her. Eve then turns to a local witch to put a fatal curse on her father, which she soon regrets and tries to undo. Less easy to reverse are the hints she drops to the husband of the woman Louis is seeing.

Even in the midst of a vibrant time for black cinema, “Eve's Bayou” stands out for its compassion, and the riveting performances that make the stories of people's lives, in which love, sex, violence, and death are constantly interwoven, far more than sheer melodrama. Debbi Morgan is the film's standout, with Mozelle revealing herself to be as passionate as she is vulnerable, particularly when a new man brings love into her life, and she fears that their marriage would be the death of him. Writer-director Kasi Lemmons has become primarily known for her work as an actress, and watching her feature film debut, it feels like a loss. Lemmons imbues her story with a strong sense of Southern Gothic, effortlessly fusing the town's history, which claimed to be founded by a freed slave named Eve and the man who freed her, to the family at the film's center, who are their descendants.

The real tragedy of “Eve's Bayou” are Eve's realizations that the supposedly stalwart adults around her are just as frail and human as she is, especially her father, who has a different story about what happened between him and Cisely. He is no villain, merely a man with a deep need to be a hero, and to be seen as a hero to those around him, which ultimately proves his undoing. When our protectors, our trust, and even our memories, prove so unreliable, perhaps the only thing we can truly rely on is love, even if our loved ones are just as flawed and unsure as we are. The film ends with Cisely and Eve realizing that they may never truly know what happened, but they can nevertheless always find a kind of peace in the loving bond they share.