To know Sidney Poitier is already a blissful thing for me. I don’t mean I know him in a situation where I meet him, but simply just like a movie viewer who knows an actor. It will be even more blissful if I can meet him in person. In my eyes, he is the part of the world changer, to a wider perspective. Lilies of the Field was only the third movie of him that I’ve watched but I’m going to watch more and more. Along with Lilia Skala, he played as a wanderer that passes a poor church area where there is a group of nun from Germany who needs help to build a new chapel. He eventually helps them and the story goes on. Ralph Nelson was the director and Jester Hairston, I knew about it just now when I start to write this post, was the dubber of Sidney Poitier’s voice when he sang.
I read on some articles, this movie was Poitier’s breakthrough and he later became an icon for black actors in Hollywood. I never know how bad the discrimination is, but to see all the ridiculous discrimination and war right now, I think it had no difference. Poitier plays a wanderer whose car needs water so he stops at a place where there are nuns from Germany, and they all cannot speak good English. He helps them to build a chapel after some trials to run away by doing it himself, although later on some people come and help him.
By watching it, I just have a feeling that the movie must be very touchy at the time because viewers can see all the interaction between a black and a group of white. The story is quite simple and it has catchy soundtrack viewers can listen during the movie. It is almost like a musical I can watch on stage. However, Poitier does not appear as a man who feels alienated, he is more like a free man who just has his car as friend. It is a lovely movie because it conveys a relationship without boundaries but it is even wider than just love between two persons like the other Poitier’s movies I have watched, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and A Patch of Blue.
I may not know Lilia Skala very well and this movie is the only movie of her that I watched, but to see her interacting with Poitier and all other nuns is just hilarious. A pious nun who just always devote all her life to God, suddenly meet a free man and somehow needs to ask him to help her building a chapel. She makes it look funny, exciting, comical but without leaving any impression of making it cheap. Yeah, I know the actor even won an Academy Award, how can this movie be bad. But still, even if it is really good, some people may won’t enjoy it because it is black and white. Oh God, think my writing got worse by the day. However the movie is still recommended.
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