Beloved

Beloved (1998)

Timing: 2:52 (172 min)

5.8/10
106

6.455/10
557

6.1/10
10000

All about film

Video 2

Photo 19

Actors and characters

Release date

1998-10-16

Country

United States

Production

Touchstone Pictures, Clinica Estetico, Harpo Films

Genre

Drama, Thriller, Horror, Mystery

Budget

$80 000 000

Revenue

$22 852 487

Website

Director

Jonathan Demme

Actors

Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Kimberly Elise, Thandiwe Newton, LisaGay Hamilton, Beah Richards, Albert Hall, Irma P. Hall, Carol Jean Lewis, Kessia Embry
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Jonathan Demme, Edward Saxon, Oprah Winfrey, Gary Goetzman, Kate Forte, Ronald M. Bozman

Operator

Tak Fujimoto

Composer

Rachel Portman

Artist

Audition

Howard Feuer

Editing

Carol Littleton, Andy Keir
All team (26)

• Preparing for the role of a slave, Oprah Winfrey participated in a 24-hour simulation during which she was bound, blindfolded, and left alone in the woods.
• Oprah Winfrey acquired the rights to Toni Morrison’s (1931-2019) novel of the same name, published in 1987, immediately upon its release. According to her, she immediately envisioned herself and Danny Glover in the roles of the characters, but it took ten years to bring the novel to the screen, and she personally oversaw the production.
• A mansion was specially built for the filming, and after the film crew left, many park visitors mistakenly believed the abandoned set was an old estate.
• There was no snow during the filming of the movie, so the winter scenes had to be shot using artificial snow, plastic icicles, and crushed ice, and all of this had to be cleared from the fields after filming was completed.
• Bee Richards’ (1920-2000) health deteriorated so seriously during filming that she had to be given pure oxygen to breathe between takes.
• To a certain extent, Toni Morrison described real events in her novel. Margaret Garner was a slave on a farm in Kentucky. Her owner was Archibald K. Gaines, who was apparently her half-brother and the father of two of her children. In January 1856, Margaret, her husband Robert Garner, and their four children crossed a frozen river to her uncle Joe Kite’s house near Cincinnati. When they were caught, Margaret Garner attempted to kill her children, but only to prevent them from being taken back into slavery. She only managed to kill her two-year-old daughter with a butcher knife before being subdued. The trial in Cincinnati did not take place for four weeks because the prosecution insisted that she be tried for violating federal fugitive slave laws (which had been passed by the US Congress in 1793 and 1850), while the defense insisted on a murder trial under state laws. (By insisting on this, the defense hoped for a pardon from the governor of Ohio if the defendant were found guilty.) By the time the court ruled that she should be tried for violating the federal fugitive slave laws, Margaret’s owner had already taken her back to Kentucky. To prevent her from falling into the hands of Ohio abolitionists (adherents of the movement to abolish slavery and liberate slaves), Gaines sent Margaret to New Orleans and then transported her to a plantation in Mississippi, where she died of typhoid fever in 1858.