If this is what TV movies are like in 2017, then we need more of them. This is a good, nay amazing if troubling, real-life story drawn into George C. Wolfe's film from the book of the same name by Rebecca Skloot - and it is the efforts made by Skloot (here played by Rose Byrne) to put the book together in cooperation with family members that feature in the film, albeit aided by (slightly less compelling) flashbacks to the earlier life of Henrietta Lacks - the woman whose endlessly-reproducing cancer cell-line (called "HeLa") formed the basis for a whole host of medical studies, first at Johns Hopkins University, then around the world. Henrietta is played here by Renee Goldsberry, while her daughter Deborah is brought to life in all her considerable complexity by Oprah Winfrey.
Winfrey is indeed SUPERB, playing a mentally troubled, mentally ill, kind, erratic, caring, needy, wronged character with sympathy and skill. Byrne and Winfrey form the main pairing of contrasts here, and its a fine thing to behold; but sometimes the scenes are also shared by an extremely convincing Reg. E. Cathey as Deborah's brother Zakariyya. Other black actors also appear as further members of the family, and all do simply TREMENDOUS work.
And if you're thinking you know this film before you see it, given that devious white scientists have wronged poor, sick, undereducated black people who only now have their rights upheld, you will only be partly right. Lacks and her family were in some ways mistreated, they were surely angry and frustrated and confused; but Deborah was too great a person to not grasp that her mother's cells had done much good in the world, and the film presents us with her visit to Johns Hopkins so many years later. There is reconciliation and healing here, if no real happy ending. There is also an electric mix of scientific and religious philosophising on what this story all means.
Looking at the limited awarding of this film, and many of the comments round here, I'll confess I fail to understand what some people think film-making is for.
Answer: it is for getting actors to put their hearts and souls into portraying stories like "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", and it matters not that the topic is difficult or heavy, but also somehow non-spectacular and not quite mainstream. It matters only that a truly wonderful storytelling art was put into effect, and we as an audience were taken convincingly to places we need at times to go, even if we do not especially want to.
Winfrey is indeed SUPERB, playing a mentally troubled, mentally ill, kind, erratic, caring, needy, wronged character with sympathy and skill. Byrne and Winfrey form the main pairing of contrasts here, and its a fine thing to behold; but sometimes the scenes are also shared by an extremely convincing Reg. E. Cathey as Deborah's brother Zakariyya. Other black actors also appear as further members of the family, and all do simply TREMENDOUS work.
And if you're thinking you know this film before you see it, given that devious white scientists have wronged poor, sick, undereducated black people who only now have their rights upheld, you will only be partly right. Lacks and her family were in some ways mistreated, they were surely angry and frustrated and confused; but Deborah was too great a person to not grasp that her mother's cells had done much good in the world, and the film presents us with her visit to Johns Hopkins so many years later. There is reconciliation and healing here, if no real happy ending. There is also an electric mix of scientific and religious philosophising on what this story all means.
Looking at the limited awarding of this film, and many of the comments round here, I'll confess I fail to understand what some people think film-making is for.
Answer: it is for getting actors to put their hearts and souls into portraying stories like "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", and it matters not that the topic is difficult or heavy, but also somehow non-spectacular and not quite mainstream. It matters only that a truly wonderful storytelling art was put into effect, and we as an audience were taken convincingly to places we need at times to go, even if we do not especially want to.