Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
For more than three decades, Ruth E. Carter has been a key costume designer in Hollywood, working with the likes of Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, John Singleton, and Ava DuVernay. She has to date received three Oscar nominations for costume design, two of which were for films on my list this week. She won the Oscar on her third nomination for Black Panther becoming the first Black artist to win that category’s award. While she is best known for her work in Lee’s films, Black Panther has brought her renewed attention not just on a small scale, but on a global one where her designs evoked a sense of place unlike any in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It isn’t often that I tackle someone other than an actor or a director, but with this weekend’s release of the Black Panther sequel, I thought it was a perfect time to look back at some of the best films she’s worked on. I’ll admit that I have several holes in her filmography, I think the five films I’ve selected are not just among her best designs she’s done, but three of them are masterworks that will be taught in film schools of varying stripes to future generations while one of them could be a part of a Spielberg-centric college class. Let’s get on to my five favorite films for which Carter designed the costumes.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Carter got her first costume designer credit on Spike Lee’s third feature film, School Daze. He then roped her into his fifth film, the seminal Do the Right Thing. It was only her second feature. The film focused on a Bed-Stuy neighborhood in New York City where a pizza delivery man (Lee) has a semi-familial relationship with the shop owner (Danny Aiello) and one of his sons (Richard Edson) while the other (John Turturro) is antagonistic towards him, urging his father to move their Italian business out of the majority-Black neighborhood.
The film explores the demographic polarization that was dominant in New York City at the time where racial tensions where high, especially in neighborhoods that were protective of their members, regardless of race. Influences within are threatening to dismantle the simple peace and Lee’s film gives the audience a rarely-seen look into that area of New York City. While race relations had been a central focus of films for a couple of decades, Lee chose rather to make his films about the Black community. It gave audiences who had seldom felt represented on the big screen a chance to see multiple characters that looked and sounded like them. It was a watershed film.
No original review available.
Amistad (1997)
Although Carter kept working with Lee, she branched out successfully to other directors, including working for Spielberg on this film. The picture follows a slave ship that mutinies and takes over, but are re-enslaved upon arrival due to legal rules turning them over to the voyage sponsor. Spielberg explored a legal drama that surrounded a pivotal legal case that helped pave the way towards full emancipation less than 30 years later, a status that seemed ephemeral until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a further century after that.
Spielberg had come off his recent victory at the Academy Awards for Schindler’s List and pledge to make more films of dramatic quality that looked at history through different lenses. This was one of this efforts. While by Spielberg’s standards, it’s a fairly middle-pack effort, the film made a star of Djimon Hounsou and brought Anthony Hopkins his fourth Oscar nomination. This was Carter’s second Oscar nomination after Malcolm X and it showed her skill off quite well. It also cemented her as one of the best costume designers working in multiple time periods and genres.
Serenity (2005)
Adding a bit of levity to this list, Serenity was a big screen adaptation of the short-lived Fox TV series Firefly. Before Joss Whedon fell down the rabbit hole of egocentrism, he was still making films that were pleasing to the masses and also fairly forward-thinking. It was around this time that many began to have doubts about the actual strength of his female characters. His masculine view of what made a strong woman began to show signs of aging with this picture. While it managed to stay just barely on the side of feminism, it wouldn’t be long before his inability to grow would get the better of him.
If you were a fan of the Firefly show, the characters felt much more lively and compelling than they came off on the big screen. Zoe (Gina Torres) and Kaylee (Jewel Staite) were periphery characters, which only made the sexist treatment of Inara (Morena Baccarin) and River (Summer Glau) stand out more. At this point, you might wonder why I would include this film. Ultimately, it’s for the reason that it was the last genuinely good movie Whedon made. It was entertaining and humorous with the actors picking up where the script’s deficiencies left off and it provided Carter a terrific vehicle for a genre she had seldom worked in, science fiction, which she again proved adept at tackling.
Selma (2014)
One of the Black filmmakers for whom Lee paved the way, DuVernay took an opportunity and stepped out in front of audiences with an assured and compelling feature film. Her prior Middle of Nowhere had already presented her skill, which she effortlessly built upon. Pulling in her Middle of Nowhere star, David Oyelow, DuVernay explored the Civil Rights march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol of Montgomery, a galvanizing moment in Civil Rights history. Oyelowo plays the charismatic leader Martin Luther King Jr. with warmth and charm, whose careworn façade seldom crumbled before a national audience. The movie starts with one of the events that bolstered King’s push for full equality, the bombing of a Selma church that killed four young girls. An interesting note, Lee himself had tackled that very event in one of his seminal efforts, the documentary Four Little Girls.
The film’s biggest downside was that King’s estate had made a deal that licensed his speeches to an unproduced film at DreamWorks and Warner Bros. meaning DuVernay had to rewrite many of them to evoke the spirit of the historic oratories without violating the copyright. It’s unfortunate as Oyelowo being able to deliver those speeches would have made the film even more monumental than it already was. Regardless, Selma proved to be one of the best and most moving films in the 2014 Oscar race, yet the Academy only cited it for two awards, Best Picture and Best Original Song, the latter of which it won. Part of the fault there is with the studio who delayed releasing the film to critics who could have bolstered the picture’s chances with the Academy. At the time, they claimed it was a result of last-minute tinkering being done, but I sincerely doubt that.
Black Panther (2018)
It is fitting that the last film on this week’s list is the progenitor of the film that inspired the list altogether. Black Panther was the first comic book adaptation nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and earned six other nominations that year, taking home awards for Best Costume Design (Carter), Original Score, and Production Design. It remains the most honored comic book film to date, besting future 11-time Oscar nominee Joker, which only won two awards. The character had made his appearance in earlier Marvel Cinematic Universe films, but this moved the action to the hidden African nation of Wakanda where a power struggle was brewing between Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) and T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the man behind the Black Panther mask.
The film positions Killmonger as an ex-military man who wants Wakanda to step out of hiding and allow its economy to work for oppressed minorities everywhere. As noble as his aims, his methods are questionable and there’s no question that the righteous Black Panther deserves to win out. It’s a great movie and Carter’s costumes were absolutely breathtaking, among the greatest creations ever put on film. Most of the film’s elements were legendary-level creations, including the costume design, production design, cinematography, and score. Carter’s contributions to cinema have always been compelling, but this may well be the film for which she’s best remembered.
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