Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars
Bottom Line: A heartwarming true story of a victory against racism in the Deep South when segregation was illegal, but still widely practiced by racists. Brilliantly acted. Could use with some trimming of length.
If you aren’t going to watch “The Best of Enemies”, do yourself a favor and read about Ann Atwater (Taraji P. Henson) and C.P. Ellis (Sam Rockwell). Atwater was a single mom and community activist fighting for equality in a place where doing so was still pretty dangerous. Ellis was a father and gas station owner and unabashed racist and president of the local social club known as the Ku Klux Klan. When the Black school burns down, they are both chosen to represent their side as the community decides whether to integrate the remaining school. Both are absolutely fascinating individuals and their similarities brought them together at a fortuitous moment in history to bring some good to the world.
“The Best of Enemies” is wonderfully acted and both Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell deserve nominations for their portrayals. The movie could have portrayed Ellis as evil, but Rockwell and the script bring out his humanity and show that he’s really just another human being trying to get by in the world. That’s the big secret. Racists are like you and me, only racist. It may seem incongruous, but you can be a decent person and a racist and C.P. Ellis is just that. The difference between C.P. Ellis and most racists, though, is when Ellis is confronted with the sheer incongruity of his racism, instead of doubling down on his racism or denying his racism, he does some real honest to goodness soul searching and knows that his views cannot stand up to scrutiny and he does the most amazing and difficult thing a human being can do: after a lifetime of being wrong, he accepts that he is wrong, he changes his views to what is right, and he actively expresses his changed views despite enormous social pressure and ostracization. We should all try to be like C.P. Ellis. This is not at all to take away at how amazing of a human being Ann Atwater appears to be. She fights the fight and has absolutely no fucks to give. She grows as an individual too throughout this ordeal, but she started clearly on the side of right so her story is slightly less dramatic than Ellis’.
The movie does run a bit longer than it needs to. There are some weird montages throughout that don’t really much serve a purpose. There are also a couple “women in danger” scenes that don’t really add to the story and are of questionable authenticity. This shouldn’t take away from the amazing story but it does take away from the movie, though it is still easily worth watching.
Depressingly, this movie can be seen as how massive an effort the people on the right side of an issue need to attempt to change just one person’s mind. That’s all that happened in this movie. One person changed his mind. In this case, that person happened to be in a position to actually effect positive change. This is an exception. This is why we are at where we are.