A truly excellent film. Fascinating and devastating, Beloved rewards the attentive, thoughtful viewer. This film should be required viewing in American high school literature classes; I can think of no picture which deals more effectively or creatively with the national horror that was slavery. Newton's performance is admirable, but I find Kimberly Elise's portrayal astonishing in its realism and subtlety. It says much about society's capacity for selective amnesia that Beloved is one of the few extensive treatments of slavery in cinema history. Indeed, until Spike Lee makes his long-promised slavery epic, it will remain the only truly penetrating depiction of the country's darkest chapter. It is a film to be cherished.