A soulful Berry brightens 'Eyes'
Halle Berry.
The name strikes fear in the hearts of those allergic to plastic. She's an oddly overrated actress, one whose sweet beauty masks the fact that she can't deliver a line without skimming its surface. Even in cartoony material such as ''X-Men," Berry is self-conscious, artificial, and, well, un-fun. She won an Oscar for a performance in ''Monster's Ball" that was all rabid hyperventilation -- as frenzied as it was hollow. And she took home an Emmy for turning movie star Dorothy Dandridge into a whimpering cardboard cutout. No Swank or Streep, she.
Which is a long, and, I admit, somewhat mean way of saying that I was surprised by her performance in ''Oprah Winfrey Presents: Their Eyes Were Watching God." As Janie Crawford in ABC's adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 classic, she finally seems to relax and give in to a role. Too often, as if to compensate for her looks, Berry hasn't acted so much as she has strained to ''act." But in this TV movie, which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on Channel 5, she forgets all about trying to appear substantial and complex, she forgets about trying at all. She submerges herself in the moment of an early 20th-century black woman living for the Now, a dreamer moving from man to man and hope to hope in a long journey to selfhood.
A Southern girl, Berry's Janie is a sort of primitive flower child, letting caterpillars crawl on her face and telling us in a voice-over, ''I was born sort of knowing things, like how the trees and the wind talk." Her grandmother, Nanny (Ruby Dee), makes her marry a dull, older farmer, urging her to forget about love and accept her good fortune as a black woman with acreage. But Janie is a yearning soul, unwilling to dampen her need for romance and sexual satisfaction. She's always looking upward, drifting in the crystalline waters near her home, undergoing rebirth in those baptismal cleansings. Later in her life, during the movie's only action sequences, water will usher in her most dramatic change.
Naturally, much of Hurston's poetry is missing from the movie and its voice-over, even her title has been compromised by the ''Oprah Winfrey Presents" promotional moniker. But while ''Their Eyes Were Watching God" is inevitably TV-movie deep, director Darnell Martin still manages to fit it with an evocative atmosphere and some lovely cinematic flourishes you don't expect to find in such a mainstream product. And while screenwriters Suzan-Lori Parks, Misan Sagay, and Bobby Smith Jr. have condensed Hurston's story and language, they've done so without cramming in material. Running at 2½ hours, the pace is slow and sure, as Janie submits to her reveries, or as her impatience builds before driving her to action.
Stifled by the emotionally barren farm life forced on her by Nanny, Janie runs off with Joe Starks (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), an ambitious man who becomes the mayor of the all-black town of Eatonville. Together, Joe and Janie build Eatonville into a thriving location. But while they appear to be free of the outside specter of racism, Janie is not free of Joe's need to dominate. He breaks her spirit, pressuring her to cover her flowing hair and to stay away from the ordinary locals.
Janie's story eventually brings her to Tea Cake (Michael Ealy), who may finally deliver the passion she hungers for. After two marriages, she is still ripe for the picking. One of the beauties of ''Their Eyes Were Watching God" is the purity and strength of Janie's vital craving for emotional fulfillment, unswayed by fear and by the need for financial security. No matter how impractical her decisions, no matter how big the obstacles, she keeps her eyes on the sky.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.
