The Grass Is Singing (1981) User Reviews

Karen Black Gets Hot and Bothered in Africa

[wes-connors · 3/10 · 2 May 2010]

In 1960, "Karen Black stars as a successful career woman based in South Africa. She falls in love (it says here) with a bush farmer and must give up the relative comfort of city life. The core of the film is her effort to assimilate herself into her forbidding new environment," according to the DVD sleeve description. Ms. Black does not adapt well to the African humidity. She transfers herself into a Southern belle and slowly expires. Since we see her death in the opening, before the flashback, no surprise. Slow. Very.

*** Killing Heat (9/18/81) Michael Raeburn ~ Karen Black, John Thaw, John Kani, John Moulder-Brown.

A difficult watch

[ablewuzi · 9/10 · 9 August 2010]

Husband and wife in difficult circumstances on an African farm, which I first took to be in South Africa, but must actually be in Rhodesia, are condemned to a zombie-like existence in Hell because of their perverse monomanias. (Or, it is a feminist tract, and I just don't get it.)

Allegorically all about white ruled Africa. And it rings true all these years later.

Very difficult to watch. Unrelentingly harsh. I'll bet the book is equally hard to read.

Some award-meriting performance. Sun Tsu tells us the the best generals go unrecognized because they achieve victory in sure, quiet ways. Perhaps the best acting is also overlooked.