Review: One Night Only
Losing Ground | Kathleen Collins | USA | 1982 | 86 minutes
Union South Marquee Theater, Thursday, February 18, 7:00pm»
Edwanike Harbour discusses the recently restored independent feature Losing Ground (1982), and argues that nuanced observations of race and culture from writer-director Kathleen Collins provide the understated essence of this compelling drama.
On the heels of her controversial Super Bowl 50 halftime performance, I found myself flummoxed at the amount of Beyoncé think pieces floating around online. The fact that so many people saw the same event and interpreted it in so many different ways speaks to the degree of diversity we have in America. It also demonstrates that we have a long way to go in terms of everyone having a seat at the table of opportunity.
Intersectionality is another word that has been bandied back in forth quite a bit in the blogosphere as people realize we are decreasingly fitting into neat, separate categories. A primer at The Washington Post explains that intersectionality addresses “how different forms of discrimination can interact and overlap, and why it was necessary for feminists to take into account the needs of women from a variety of backgrounds when considering social questions and issues to advocate for.” Beyoncé may be one of the most popular entertainers on earth but she is black and female which makes her every move subject to much scrutiny.
Filmmaker Kathleen Collins (1942-1988) had something to say about intersectionality for minority female academics long before the term was coined. Her film, Losing Ground, has been credited as one of the first feature films by a black American woman. It was released in 1982, which makes this a harrowing prospect to even think about.
I was alarmed at my own internal response when watching Losing Ground. In my three decades of film watching, I have never seen a black female professor as the protagonist. I’ve never even seen a film where the sensible minority sidekick was a black female professor. This is something that just doesn’t exist in the world of celluloid.
Films involving more than one or two black central characters are often labeled a “black film” by default. This is a loaded term on several levels. The mere presence of black people in a movie does not make it a “black film” per se, but rather the subject matter at hand. Losing Ground could just of easily had an all white cast, since this story of a philandering husband neglecting his smart, beautiful wife has been told time and time again. However, the intriguing subtleties and nuances of race and culture that remain unsaid make Losing Ground a compelling drama.
Sara Rogers, Ph.D. (Seret Scott) is a philosophy professor at a liberal arts college. The opening scene was a bit jarring initially as you see a classroom full of primarily black men with their shirts unbuttoned exposing their bare chests, leering at Sara. It invokes stereotypes that the movie manages to avoid. Sara is extremely intelligent, stalwart, and rigid in her ways of thinking and being about the world. However, she is perfectly capable of understanding abstract thought as she is a philosophy professor.
Sara will be on sabbatical soon to finish up a book about the aesthetics of ecstasy. Her husband, Victor (Bill Gunn) is a carefree artist who has just sold one of his major works. He has a completely different worldview than Sara and at times belittles her for not being as loose and fluid as he is. Their relationship is a complicated by Victor’s wandering eye for Puerto Rican women and Sara’s emotional rigidity.
Sara is in many ways the model minority: dedicated to her work and not acknowledging her own marginalization within her academic community. When Sara goes to the local library to do research for her book, a white librarian asks her if she is looking for a novel and seems put off when Sara tells her she is researching aesthetics. Is the librarian some small town simpleton who doesn’t understand what she is talking about, or is she reacting to this hypereducated, lithe black woman asking for something beyond some cheap Stephen King novel? You don’t know. You aren’t supposed to know, and it is not knowing that causes these misperceived slights and microaggressions that are far too common in the life of a black female academic.
Sara’s mother (Billie Allen), is an actress, which creates an interesting dynamic given Sara’s choice of mate. She is dramatic yet grounded at the same time. She is able to show empathy for Sara in a way that makes the relationship endearing while it illuminates the contrast between Sara’s stiffness to her husband’s carefree attitude.
In one touching scene, her mother says, “Are you still building your castle?” This took my breath away. In many ways, this question is something many marginalized academics can relate to: the idea of creating a foundation early on in life to build, build, build, only to have that goal post moved just outside of your reach.
Suddenly, everything about Sara’s character makes sense: the rigidity, hyperfocus, and the guardedness. She has set her path on solid ground to build this castle.
One of Sara’s students is a struggling film director, and he asks her to play a role in a movie. This is naturally something completely outside of her wheelhouse but she decides in the face of her wayward, yet critical husband to take the part. She settles in to the role right away. The boundaries she has immersed herself in seems to melt immediately.
As she throws herself into this character, her roaming husband has found a young Puerto Rican girl whom he wants to be the subject of one of his paintings, and arguably other activities. As the film progresses, and the strains on their relationship increase, Victor begins to see Sara in a different light and it’s not easy for him to get a grasp of where he is emotionally.
This low budget production reminded me of some of the more personal films of Cassavetes and Nichols. I have a special place in my heart for all of the last decade of the Golden Age of cinema, and I always will.
What really saddens me is that very few people have seen or will see this film. It played once on PBS’s American Playhouse, then basically disappeared. Unfortunately, Kathleen Collins passed away six years after the film was released and Bill Gunn died the year afterwards. It takes a true cinephile to dig up tiny, obscure gems such as this one.
While everyone is up in arms about Beyonce’s attempt at black female empowerment, marginalized voices such as Kathleen Collins’ fade into obscurity. We can and have to do better than this.