Benedicte Kage
Professor Kaur
Introduction to Film and Media Studies
Movie Analysis
5/26/16

Beyond The Lights: There’s More to it

Beyond the Lights, is a 2014 Drama/Romance film written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood who also wrote and directed the classic love story Love and Basketball which came out in 2000. The success of Love and Basketball helped propel Prince-Bythewood career and reputation and Beyond the Lights definitely confirmed her talent and ability to bring us touching and heart filling love stories. Prince-Bythewood gives us a modern-day love story starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw who plays Noni, a rising pop star who makes provocative music although her talent is beyond that which the industry allows. Kaz who is played by Nate Parker is a Los Angeles police officer who sees the truth behind Noni’s fake persona. Kaz falls in love with Noni and despite the fact that his father objects because he wants his son to go further in politics. Though Kaz and Noni go through very difficult circumstances, they stay together because of the fact that they actually see each other in the way that no one else does. Noni on the other hand is a mixed beauty that is from Bixton, a neighborhood of South London. Though she gets personal inspiration from singers such as Nina Simone and is talented enough to pull off her classic song “Black Bird”, she is bullied into taking the easiest and most common path to what we call stardom. This path which so often includes sexualization of women, especially black women in an industry who sees women as real life sex dolls and uses Auto-Tune to buffer there exams. Noni is forced to live a life that doesn’t even reflect who she is or what she feels inside. Her mom-ager Macy (Minnie Driver), pushes Noni way past her limits just so she can make sure that they are financially set and, like mentioned in the movie, and that Noni is a “winner” instead of the “runner-up”. Throughout the movie Noni struggles to find herself while being in real love with Kaz unlike her fake relationship with rapper Kid Culprit played by the famous “Machine Gun Kelly”. Instead of being the same old melodrama film that uses the same old “rise and fall” of superstardom, this film is a complex story which makes us really think about what really goes on in the music industry and the mindset of the people behind it. Prince-Bythewood gives us a powerful critique of the entertainment industry as a whole. We see the creativity of the director through the way she voices her opinion while still being backed up by major entertainment companies even such as BET. Through this heartwarming love stories we get to see the reality of what is truly happening to some of our favorite artists. Though she wins a billboard award with her celebrity boyfriend just a few weeks before her very first album drops, she was very unhappy and almost walks off the balcony of her hotel suite until she was saved by Kaz. This story is far from complicated, Mbatha-Raw (Noni) and Parker pervade their characters with an earnestness that actually never tips over into cloying gushiness. Noni could have turned from the poor little girl to the rich girl, but because of how the music industry treats young women, it’s dangerous. According to recent news, an artist by the name of Kehlani attempted suicide and now is recovering. I watched beyond the lights, I thought about Kehlani ,this seemed like the perfect example because it’s like two young women, both struggling to do the right thing but forced into a life that is suffocating them. Why become rich and famous and not even enjoy your life? Life is so much more than money and fancy cars it’s so much more than a new house and a new entourage of fake friends. Noni feels trapped throughout the whole movie and surely Kehlani felt the same way, she was forced to sing what everyone else wanted her to sing and dance how everyone else wanted her to dance. When we are young we have this dream of being famous rappers and famous singers or even famous actors and sometimes we spend our whole entire lives developing our own style of music just so that the high executive of the music industry comes and imposes everything on us.
It’s hard to tell whether her stage performances are realistic for the current hip-hop era or is it just a push over into parody, I believe that either way it’s actually hard to watch unless you don’t mind the idea that this woman is seen as nothing other than a sexual object. Prince-Bythewood makes it almost impossible to do that here. Even in the bedroom scene, the scene itself is focused more on how Noni and Kaz get the chance to finally relax and comes off more intense than a soap-opera. Despite the drive towards goodness, both Noni and Kaz don’t come off as a goody-goody. Noni is obviously stuck in a bad situation and needs to break free from that but Kaz has to do some soul searching of his own. Just because they want to be good doesn’t necessarily mean they know what the consequences are or how it looks. I believe that Prince-Bythewood has done a great job of letting that whole journey to realness play out.
As the Kaz pushed to take the political leap of a lifetime, his heart is also torn. The director allowed us to see how being forced to do things takes us away from our hearts desires. This can relate to many of us regardless of what sometimes parents don’t realize how much pressure they put on us when they try to impose their hopes and dreams for us on us. For example, in African culture, things are even harder because our parents have children and already put in their mind that they will be doctors, lawyers, or nurses. Of course parents want the best for their children but now they live their whole life trying to please their parents instead of being happy.
According to seeker.com, the suicide rate among musicians is about three times the national average. It’s said that if you were to measure among the 2,000,000 people who have died each year in the United States, it shows that musicians appear to be the only more likely to have committed suicide. I found it quite interesting that she chose that song above all others to do a rendition on because when we think about the artist Nina Simone, we realize that she herself went through thing such as being forced to live a life that she didn’t want to live because of her family. She was a preacher’s child and her family and the people who were around her wanted her to sing Christian music but once she broke free she was criticized saying that she was playing “devil music”. This made her upset and the whole time that she was in the entertainment industry, she didn’t feel herself and it was as if she was being pulled by both sides. She actually was diagnosed with a mental illness, she was bipolar.
Overall, it is a very nice film that is filled with a lot of great talent and really invigorating. I really enjoyed the movie because it had so many different aspects to it. You could see feminism, you could see depression, and so much more. Movie romances aren’t supposed to follow the same old story lines and in this case Prince-Bythewood’s script gives enough twists and turns that it doesn’t even fall in that line. I must say that my favorite part of the movie was Noni’s second rendition of “Blackbird” in a cappella. During this moment, just like many others, mirrors the swifling and twirling unself-conscious feeling that pop music can provide. I would definitely recommend this movie. I give this movie two thumbs up.

Work Cited

Dailymail.com, Alexandra Klausner For. "Abandoned, Abused, and Suicidal: Nina Simone's Daughter, 52, Reveals Abuse at the Hands of Her Mother in Shocking Documentary." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 24 June 2015. Web. 24 May 2016.
"Kehlani -- I Tried to Kill Myself ... Over Kyrie Irving Cheating Rumors." Http://www.tmz.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2016.
Puig, Claudia. "'Beyond the Lights' Is a Sharply Focused Winner." USA Today. Gannett, 13 Nov. 2014. Web. 24 May 2016.