{"id":1113,"date":"2015-03-19T09:41:41","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T09:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/?p=6539"},"modified":"2023-08-28T16:50:39","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T23:50:39","slug":"nine-movies-about-family-secrets","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/nine-movies-about-family-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"9 Movies about Family Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Noel Murray<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Lacey Schwartz applied to Georgetown at age 18, she left the \u201cracial identity\u201d box unchecked, but did submit a photograph, and not long after she was accepted at the university, she was invited to join the black student association. The problem? Schwartz had been raised in a white Jewish household, by a mother who told her that her darker skin and kinky hair were due to her dad\u2019s roots in Sicily. After a few months in college, Schwartz learned the truth: that she was the product of a tryst between her mother and an African American man.<\/p>\n

Schwartz\u2019s documentary Little White Lie<\/a><\/em>\u00a0is about more than just her family\u2019s biggest secret. The film is a highly personal inquiry into the construction of racial identity, considering how others\u2019 perceptions change depending on who they believe a person to be. But a big part of the appeal of Little White Lie<\/em> is tied to its hook, because there\u2019s something inherently dramatic in the story of an individual discovering that everything she thought she knew about her life was wrong.<\/p>\n

The nine documentaries and feature films below offer a few more examples of how moviemakers have handled similar excursions into the sometimes-dark, sometimes-tangled roots of family trees.<\/p>\n

The Melting Pot<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Secrets<\/em><\/strong> &<\/em><\/strong> Lies<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (1996)<\/strong>: Longtime movie buffs may read the description of Little White Lie<\/em> and think immediately of Mike Leigh\u2019s 1996 drama Secrets &\u00a0Lies<\/em>, which became one the British filmmaker\u2019s biggest hits worldwide (and the recipient of five Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture). A subtle study of race and class in the UK, Secrets &\u00a0Lies <\/em>has Marianne Jean-Baptiste playing a successful young black optometrist named Hortense, who goes searching for her birth mother, working-class wreck Cynthia Purley (played by Brenda Blethyn) who\u2019s been sponging off her kindly younger brother Maurice (Timothy Spall). Leigh\u2019s choice of profession for Hortense is no accident. When she arrives in the Purley\u2019s lives, she helps them to see how they\u2019ve been taking each other for granted, and hiding their true feelings. This is an often-intense film, but with an ultimately positive take on ripping open old wounds so they can heal properly.<\/p>\n

In the clip below, Leigh talks a little about how he applied his usual improvisational methods of developing a story to make the inter-family dynamics in Secrets & Lies<\/em> more potent.<\/p>\n