Receiving a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 6.6/10 stars on IMDB, this Sundance Film Festival competitor has audiences around America buzzing. Running 108 minutes, the movie centers around activist and radio show host, Samantha White, who starts a culture war at the fictional Ivy League college, Winchester. Some of the well-off white community responds to her actions by throwing a “black face” party for Halloween, and the plot escalates from there.

In an attempt to lightheartedly discuss serious racial issues, “Dear White People” talks about tragic mulattoes, bourgeois upper-class racists, and affirmative action. Although the satirical comedy can at some times seem to be coonery at its finest, the movie was overall funny and had back-to-back jokes. The funniest line of the movie is, “Dear White People,  the minimum requirement of Black friends needed  to not seem racist has just been moved to two. Sorry, but your weed man, Tyrone, does not count.” The comical remarks made by the Afrocentric main character, Sam White, were cynical, sassy, stocked with big words, and required much thought for a rebuttal.

Each supporting character has a backstory, dilemma, and eventually they find a way to embrace their realities. All of the characters at some point act as if they are black, gay, classy, or just generally happy. The movie deals with major socio-economic cleavages not by skimming the surface, but by diving in and touching the real aspects of pains of the different types of African Americans, yet still makes sure not to offend anyone.

In hindsight, Dear White People boldly confabulates what occurs in the African American society and how it can change over time by psychoanalyzing the origins of the melanin conundrums.

-Maya Reese

Dear Beacon readers– this was a must see film.

The content is funny, intellectual, engaging, and true (whether we encounter racist circumstances as absurd as the ones centered in the movie, at WY or not, they are out there in the real, less accepting, parts of the world and they are prominent). This is a fact that the director supports with evidence during the credits of the film where he inserts real “black-face” party photos from colleges around America. Although the plot of the movie is fictional, one could tell that the actors in the movie believed in and committed to the parts they portrayed.

The cast as a whole is very well chosen. From the protagonist, Sam, with her caustic yet matter-of-fact highlighting of the racist events that subside at Winchester and in society, the Allstate guy who uses his incredibly low voice to lay down the law as the morally upstanding Dean of Students, the necklace and v-neck wearing lover and buffer to Sam and her dominant personality, the ever-so rude and ignorant trouble maker that was, at the end of the movie, trying to do the right thing, along with many other intricate characters. The quality of acting, as a whole, is pretty believable. Yet, there are some points, whether it was the cut of the scene or the over-dramatic pondering faces that we see in Hallways of Our Lives, that remind me that it’s a festival film with a up and coming cast and director.

The cinematography of the film, while great, seems to over-exaggerate the ‘art festival’ film style. Most of the layouts of the shots are dramatic and the characters are either placed very close to the bottom of the frame or far off to the side. Artsy shots here and there usually add flare and interest to a movie, but in this case, they are overused (one can merely hope to be Wes Anderson). Almost every other frame is a little off and it seems like it’s trying too hard. The sets and the campus on the other hand, are gorgeous and a few of the scenes had me hankering to apply to Winchester.

Overall, the movie, although some of its points are trivial, isn’t over-exaggerated and abusive, but is strong and not in the mood to spare feelings. I would recommend it to anyone who was asking simply because it shows a perspective that has, in some cases, been swept under the carpet. It is made in a tasteful way and deserves to be put on the silver screen.

That’s all folks!

-Sophie Kreutz

Here is the trailer