Go Tell It on the Mountain (1984) Online

Not only is it a terrific and creative adaptation of Baldwin's great book. It is just a very very moving film.

One review says you need to be a Christian to appreciate the movie. I'm not a Christian and I appreciate it greatly. It speaks to fundamental aspects of being human: parent-child relationships, the burden of the past on the present, the struggle to find our selves amid all the many demands placed on us by others. And yes, the place of spirituality and transcendence in all that.

It's also a crazy "who's who" of contemporary African-American actors well before they became household faces and names.

*Watch this movie.* You'll be glad you did.

I have to admit I had a hard time following the plot because the movie jumps back and fourth between the present and the past and has a myriad of black characters, most of whom all look alike to me.

I came to watch this without any knowledge whatsoever of James Baldwin as an author or as a person.

It was refreshing to see a movie from a truly black perspective and from a POV from within the Pentecostal church.

It drives a deep realistic picture of the complexity of lives navigating the real world. As each character deepens you get some idea of some of the whys but it wasn't until I learned later that Baldwin was both black and gay in the 1950s that things began to make more sense.

The movie ends with this ritualistic dance in church as the main character seems to be simply putting on a good show (as his aunt just did prior to his "conversion") and gains the congratulations of the congregation that he is now "saved". This left me feeling that the author wasn't really pro-christian or a believer in the same sense that I see most Christians. It might simply require more knowledge of the Pentecostal doctrines, especially of the black churches in Harlem in the 1950s,

The movie is, for sure, a unique experience and not like any other I can recall. Definitely worth a watch, but I will come armed with a better understanding of Baldwin himself when I next watch this and hopefully it will make more sense to me the second time through.

I'm not a Christian, so it had no appeal to me in that guise. I mainly watched this for Ving Rhames and Alfre Woodard; otherwise, I probably would have skipped it.

The main character is played by two people: Ving Rhames (younger) and Paul Winfield (older). They are nothing alike. Not in the movie, nor in real life. Rhames has this "bad boy" character about himself in many of his pictures, and that is showcased here. Then ala Sergeant York (1941) he finds religion (in a rain storm) and still showcases that perception but as a preacher.

Paul Winfield, though an equally good actor, is more forthright and direct. It did nothing for me. It was like I was watching two different people, and in a way that's exactly what you're doing but as actors playing the same part there should be at least similarities, and I saw none. That was a huge detractor for me.

The story is an ordinary story about, mainly, a man's life. How he came to be who he is, and how he ends up being. There's nothing particularly special about that. Why I feel this would mainly only attract Christians.

There are good, humorous, sometimes overly dramatic moments in the film but it's all average, in my opinion.

6/10.