This Violet Bloomed Beautifully

Based on true events in the midst of the 2000 election, American Violet tells the astonishing story of Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie), a 24 year-old African American single mother of four young girls living in a small Texas town who is barely making ends meet on a waitress’ salary and government subsidies. On an early November morning while Dee works a shift at the local diner, the powerful local district attorney leads an extensive drug bust, sweeping her Arlington Springs housing project with military precision. Police drag Dee from work in handcuffs, dumping her in the squalor of the women’s county prison. Indicted based on the uncorroborated word of a single and dubious police informant facing his own drug charges, Dee soon discovers she has been charged as a drug dealer. She is offered a hellish choice: plead guilty and go home as a convicted felon or remain in prison and fight the charges thus, jeopardizing her custody and risking a long prison sentence.

Samuel Goldwyn Films is an independent studio known for releasing films considered to be arty: those which take risks, are adventurous, different from the mainstream, for select audiences. American Violet may be an exception to the rule. There is everything mainstream about its theme, its heroes, its villains, its goal to elicit from the audience heartbreaks and tears, smiles and even joy at the victories of the good guys. Goldwyn policies or not, Tim Disney’s film is one to be welcomed. Since this is based on a true story, we are not spoiling audience expectations by relating an outcome that will be welcomed by all people of good spirit and intentions. Moreover the film is anchored by a stunning performance from newcomer Nicole Beharie, actually her second role but the first that brings her remarkable talents to the fore. While we like to think that our country has come a long way in the fight for racial justice—and it most certainly has—there are pockets of resistance weighing heaviest, perhaps, in small towns, particularly in the South. Melody, Texas, the area of all the story’s actions, is a village so rural that not even Google carries a listing. This is a town run not by its mayor but by its district attorney, a racist who has the judges on his side, the police in his pocket. Under his direction, the police repeatedly make raids on projects in the poorest sections of the town, those which are inhabited almost one hundred percent by people of color. And while petty larcenies like shoplifting are prosecuted with some fervor, the principal crime that provides residents for the county jail is the peddling of drugs, particularly crack cocaine. With the help of what some southerners would call a damn Yankee (a Jewish fellow at that) and the reluctant cooperation of a resident who, despite having to live in the town with friends he’d rather not alienate, the case against one brave individual was one that the D.A. should never have pressed. This individual, Dee Roberts (Beharie), is a single mother of four who is picked up by the police on a daring raid on her housing project, an action netting some who may well be guilty of drug trafficking but which nets Dee on a drug selling charge because of the testimony of a single resident. Though she has done nothing, her mother, Alma (Alfre Woodard), urges her to cop a plea, as does her appointed lawyer, to abort a potential 16-25 year sentence: one which would require her to plead guilty, get ten years’ probation, but which would brand her a felon and result in her being evicted with her kids from the project. Harassed on one side by the abusive father (Xzibit) of two of her children and on the other by a overzealous D.A., Calvin Beckett (Michael O’Keefe), she weighs the plea offer but is dissuaded by David Cohen (Tim Blake Nelson) who is sent by the American Civil Liberties Union to persuade Dee to sue the D.A. The best defense is a good offense. With the not entirely enthusiastic help of former assistant D.A. Sam Conroy (Will Patton), they call Calvin Beckett into legal chambers during a deposition with the hope of impeaching his credibility. The intimate details of her lengthy ordeal, set against the backdrop of that landmark case, is the subject of American Violet, a gripping dramatization of the events surrounding the sad tragedy which ruined many a family. We see that before being framed for a crime she didn't commit, Dee had been getting along if not exactly flourishing, caring for her girls while trying to save enough money from waitressing to study cosmetology someday. But afterwards, she's soon without the financial resources or the emotional support needed to handle the situation. In matter-of-fact fashion, this brilliant bio-pic effectively illustrates the likely fallout visited upon a law-abiding but unsophisticated person like Dee up against an impersonal legal justice system unconcerned with the truth. For when she is falsely accused of distributing narcotics and held on $70,000 bail, the ripple effect of the ensuing nightmare means that she stands to lose her dignity, her job, her savings and custody of her children in fast order. American Violet boasts solid ensemble performances, including one by Malcolm Barrett in the role of Byron Hill, a lawyer who most of the time is a silent participant to the proceedings but whose fury is unleashed during the second half of the movie with resonant effect. In a plot twist, some testimony that appears to come out of nowhere, a dues ex machine if you will, Hill does what everyone in the audience prays he will do. During the movie’s epilogue, we learn that the D.A. in real life has been re-elected, presumably—as implied by the script—because many of the town’s African Americans have police records and are unable to vote while at the same time the whites in the burg just may not be entirely opposed to racist tactics. Director Disney does not hide his liberal inclinations, now and then showing us some file film of the tainted election of 2000—by which he just might imply that the corruption endemic to the town of Melody, TX can be found in the American justice system at the very highest level. I give this one a 4 on my "Go See" scale"