The Best of Enemies, based on the book by Osha Gray Davidson - 8.6 out of 10

The Best of Enemies, based on the book by Osha Gray Davidson

8.6 out of 10

Although critics have not been enthusiastic about this motion picture, the undersigned has enjoyed very much, even if it will probably not gather Academy Award nominations and this is no Green Book.

Taraji P. Henson is formidable as Ann Atwater, a civil rights activist that tries to improve the life of African Americans in Durham, North Carolina, in 1971, when segregation was still the obsession of the white people, especially members of the Ku Klux Klan, led by C.P. Ellis aka the always outstanding Sam Rockwell.

When the school where mostly children of the black community learn suffers from a fire, the local authorities are supposed to find solutions, and the only one that makes sense and would have to be adopted is to ‘integrate’ and gather the children in another school.

However, the racist white people would not like that, at least to begin with and in a majority perhaps, led outside the Klan by the elected official Carvie Oldham aka Bruce McGill, who is using dirty tricks, illegal methods, procrastination or outright violence and blackmail to attain his nefarious purposes.

From the beginning, we see him heading a meeting where many of the African Americans protest against the housing conditions, the fact that they are pressed to pay rent or face evacuation, when the property owner is offering terrible living conditions and the local authorities do nothing to correct this.

On the issue of the school fire, the same representative – for most of the white folks of Durham, it seems and one would think of present day Trump supporters – comes out with two propositions, supposedly solutions to the problem caused by the fire…

One alternative would be for the black children to continue in the same school and the other would mean integration and would have to be accepted of voted down by a gathering of the community.

Even before the fire, the African American children had had a very rough time, for they had been given books to study which were for different years, the older students would be given material they had had to study long before and there were many other obstacles to confront.

This seems to develop into a confrontation between one camp on one side, led by the Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, C.P. Ellis, and the other, the community of the African Americans, led by Ann Atwater, which would have to be settled in court, only a judge decides to take an unusual step.

An expert is invited to try something like mediation, inviting the two parties together to establish some ground rules, identify some of the problems, issues, look for possible solutions and then vote on and adopt the result.

A number of white people are selected and black inhabitants of Durham, to consider if integration might be conceivable and eventually approved by vote, albeit some are so obtuse, adamant, and ferociously segregationist that it seems impossible to envisage a positive outcome.

There is one man who has gone way beyond the limit reached by other white males and this is Lee Trombley aka the very good John Gallagher Jr., who has a shop where his manager is an African American.

We would learn that they had fought in Vietnam together and the manager has been much braver than his comrade has and this rara avis in Durham respects the black community and looks like voting for integration.

This is when the Klan interferes, without the knowledge of the Cyclops, and they send an inspection at the store, where they claim to have found a minor difference of a few centimeters in some sign, an evidently pathetic claim, which is made only to signal to the voting member that if he wants his shop opened again, he has to turn against integration.

Maddy Mays, another white person in the commission is threatened with violence and rape if she does not become hostile to the positive vote for the school premises, although she had been in favor up to the point where two men enter her house and scare her.

Meanwhile, C.P. Ellis suffers an unexpected transformation, which is obviously gradual, from the loathsome, revolting and monstrous Cyclops to a man who starts listening to the ‘other side, whereas early on he would have nothing to do with those he considered ‘inferior’.

Then he sees that kindness is not a monopoly of the whites, in fact, his initial side starts doing evil, horrendous things - not that he should have been surprised given the history of that racist, murderous organization – and Ann Atwater helps him with his autistic son.

Gradually, an epiphany might be taking place, although, without spoilers of any kind, this seems so farfetched given the background, firm, and outrageous beliefs of the protagonist that nothing short of a miracle could alter the state of things.

At the end of the film, we see the real people that are depicted in the motion picture, for this is no invented fairy tale, Ellis, Atwater and the rest are based on real life personages.