The film was written by Susan McMartin and directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) is set in Los Angeles and spans the 1970s to the late '80s. The titular character — Henry Joseph Church — is played by Eddie Murphy in what has been billed as his triumphal dramatic turn. Mr. Church, as he is called, is a domestic cook, which makes the film fair game. (In fact, the film’s original title, when it was written by McMartin 10 years ago, was Cook.)
It’s a rhythm well-known to generations of Black cooks for whom institutional racism had made most other modes of employ unattainable.
At the behest of the late lover, for whom Mr. Church was
also a cook, Mr. Church shows up at the Brody’s modest abode, turns the
radio to jazz, and dons an apron for this nice white family. He makes
things like fluffy pancakes with fruit salad, grilled pork chops, and
grits for breakfast. When Charlie returns from school, there are tall
icebox cakes awaiting her and Mr. Church at the counter, all smiles,
just so happy that little Charlie enjoys his work. He is resolutely
deferential, referring to Ms. Brody as "ma’am" and sagaciously parries
her early attempts to get him to leave. Charlie, a spritely little girl,
took a nasty dislike to Mr. Church early on, but his excellence at
making French toast is rivaled only by his great forbearance of the
young girl. And eventually his steadfastness, dogged loyalty, and
inexhaustible selflessness converts Charlie.
Marie Brody dies. Mr. Church is sad. "Even his weeping is graceful,"
notes Charlotte. Mr. Church pays for Charlotte’s education at Boston
University, with savings incurred by Marie Brody’s couponing. While at
school, Charlotte becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Mr. Church offers her
his house to live in, and later becomes a co-caretaker of the child,
Isabel.
What does he do at night? He plays piano at a jazz club
called Jelly’s and, when he’s not serving food, often returns home
staggeringly drunk engaged in imaginary conversation with his abusive
pastor father. But these moments of sadness are, he says, private.
Charlotte is to remain blissfully unaware, though she nobleness obligingly
yearns to help him. "I wanted to let him know he could tell me," she
says. Evidently it does not occur to her that perhaps he doesn’t want
to.
Throughout his years of servitude, Mr. Church provides
all the meals, rising before the rest of the house to prepare breakfast,
running out during the day to buy groceries, and returning home to cook
dinner. It is a rhythm well-known and familiar to the generations of
Black cooks and maids for whom institutional racism had made most
other modes of employ unattainable. But not Mr. Church. He could have
been anything he wanted to be.
Towards the end of the film, Mr. Church dies.He had an enlarged heart.
More insidiously, the character of Mr. Church represents a
reconstruction of the mammy stereotype, the trope of a smiling Black
domestic who lives to serve his or her white employer. One wishes one
could not see a through-line from the grinning blackface mammies in D.W.
Griffith’s 1915 work of racist propaganda Birth of a Nation, but this movie proves that the thread of this emollient little fiction is still being spun, with an almost unbroken continuity.
0 comments