![]() ![]() None of this would be possible, after all, without a massive core of empathy, both on the part of Lacks‘s screenwriters in finding a way to convey the feelings and thoughts of a woman who resists exposition and on the part of Winfrey, who brings makes the story’s emotionality ring true. In one titanic scene, Deborah prays and weeps, pleading to God to “take this burden from me.” It’s intense, dialed-in acting that comes from somewhere deep within Winfrey. She’s rocked by self-doubt that’s all the more painful to watch because it lacks explanation-to her, it just is. Deborah lacks the language of psychology-language that’s, coincidentally enough, one of the relentlessly analytical Winfrey’s trademarks in real life-that would help her understand quite why thinking about her late mother is quite so fraught. ![]() When a cloud passes over, everything grinds to a halt. Winfrey reveals, in Deborah, a personality that’s practically meteorological-when the sun beats down, she’s manic, dreaming of starting a museum dedicated to her mother and chasing down strangers at gas stations and introducing Byrne’s Rebecca Skloot as “my reporter” as though everyone had one. ![]() That wouldn’t be true to the story Lacks is telling (based on Rebecca Skloot’s nonfiction book), nor would it give Winfrey as much to tap into. She’s uncinematically unversed in the ways of the world it’d make for an easier story if Deborah were able to more easily pick up on what the project was, or didn’t vacillate on whether or not to trust the journalist. Byrne gets to practice varieties of stifled frustration, as Deborah is far from the perfect journalistic source. Winfrey’s character Deborah Lacks is contacted by a reporter (Rose Byrne) about the circumstances surrounding her late mother Henrietta Lacks’s endlessly self-replicating cells, used in medical experimentation without her consent, have come to play an important role in modern medicine, though Henrietta is in death anonymous, her family uncompensated. They’re roles that dovetail nicely with Winfrey’s current status as a quasi-religious icon, a figure who suffers for all of us. But there, and in her Oscar-nominated breakthrough in The Color Purple, Winfrey played characters on fairly clearly-defined fights against adversity, women who struggle against historical circumstances with iron wills. It’s been nearly four years since Winfrey had a major acting role-in what could have been a rote supportive-wife role in Lee Daniels’ The Butler, she stole every scene she was in out from under Forest Whitaker. Those skills are put to use in HBO’s new movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, airing Saturday. ![]()
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