Opinion: Brooklyn, I Watched Zoe Saldana In ‘Nina’ So You Don’t Have To
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by Like many, I was reluctant to watch Nina — a movie biopic based on the life of the late jazz legend, Nina Simone. However, I wanted to give the film a chance.
The film, written and directed by Cynthia Mort, has been criticized since its make in 2012 for casting actress Zoe Saldana as Simone. In what is equivalent to black face, a lighter-skinned Saldana is covered in dark makeup and a prosthetic nose to resemble the icon, but comes across as a caricature of some sort. While that alone could sway anyone who has ever loved Ms. Simone from paying their hard earned dollars from seeing this film, I wanted to ignore the cast and take in the storyline — remaining fully open.
A young Simone opens in what seems like a school recital in North Carolina, 1946, taking her seat at a piano, in-front of a room full of White Americans (American flag hangs prominently in the center of the screen). Her parents, standing in the back of the auditorium because of the obvious color of their skin, was called out loudly by Simone “I would like my parents to have their seats up front.” Making her demands obvious, “I’m not playing unless they do.” Her parents then move to the front, a few people leave as they feel disrespected because of it, yet Simone goes on to play. An extremely powerful opener that focuses on Simone’s ability to get what she wants, even at a young age, but everything after that seems to fall short of the legend we know.
The film then skips the important years of Simone — the rise, her birth of her daughter, the backstory behind her revolutionary music and moves quickly into a storyline of a heart-broken talent. The movie focuses on an erratic Simone and her assistant turned manager, Clifton Henderson, played by Selma‘s David Oyelowo, whom she met during her time in a physiatric hospital. The pain doesn’t stop there. The lackluster writing of Clifton’s back-story, leaves us to figure out who this man is and his “important” connection to Ms. Simone. His parents strongly state “she needs you” and that’s about as much as you’ll know.
The film is all over the place and extremely hard to get through. According to the Chicago Tribune, it’s also not exactly accurate. “Mort’s script changes the geography, and has Simone tell her French interviewer that, when she didn’t get into Curtis, she had to go to Atlanta not Atlantic City to earn money, thus erasing the then-bustling Jersey Shore resort from history,” writes the Tribune. Although, after the singer didn’t get accepted to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia — she believes due impart to the color of her skin — she lived in West Philadelphia teaching piano, and then sang in Atlantic City in 1954 at the Midtown Bar.
Trying to find the best moments of the film are few and far between. One thing I can say, though Saldana may have not been the perfect cast, her acting wasn’t bad. Take that for what it is.
