9/10
A 50 year old dinner - Still warm
25 September 2017
I went to see it for the first time with my grandmother when I was 17. I loved it but it felt strange to me because my grandmother after 22 years of widowhood, had remarried to an African American man. He had become a blessing in my grandmother's life and in ours. How could Spencer Tracy of all people be against the union? After the movie we went to dinner and my grandmother answered all my questions with a single answer that's been with me always and that sometimes explains absurdities like Charlottesville 2017 - "Society, humanity doesn't evolve all at the same time" Of course Grandma', you were right. Watching Guess Who's Coming To Dinner in 2017 was an experience. Is not that Spencer Tracy is against their union, - Tracy was only worried to what his daughter was going to face 1967 - He was thinking like a father and not like a thinking, evolved liberal. On the other hand, Roy Glenn, Sidney Poitier's father objects to his son marrying a white girl. Sidney Poitier stops him by saying "Dad, you see yourself as a colored man, I see myself as a man" Was it as didactic as it sounds in 1967? Who cares? The message was delivered - I also was so moved to see Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy together for the last time and they knew it was for the last time. Sidney Poitier is superb as the messenger who points at the absurdity of racism. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner is a delicious document of its day.
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