The Lemon Project is a multifaceted and dynamic attempt to rectify wrongs perpetrated against African Americans by William & Mary through action or inaction. In many ways, Lemon stands in the place of the known and unknown African Americans who helped to build, maintain, and move the university forward.
LEMON FULL
We cannot know the full dimensions of Lemon’s life or his relationship with W&M. The Project is named for Lemon, a man who was once enslaved by William & Mary. In 2009, after student and faculty resolutions calling for a full investigation of W&M's past, the Board of Visitors acknowledged that the university had “owned and exploited slave labor from its founding to the Civil War and that it had failed to take a stand against segregation during the Jim Crow Era.” As a result, the Board offered its support for the establishment of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation. While William & Mary’s role in the nation’s founding has been widely studied, it has only been recently that scholars have begun asking questions of the university's role in perpetuating slavery and racial discrimination.
It has also been an important political and social force for the past 300 years, both reflecting and giving shape to ideas of freedom, slavery, race, equality, and citizenship in Virginia and the nation. The university is more than just a place of education, however. It can be that this all is necessary in the context of financing the project, but it borders on annoying and only forces you to grab a flashlight and leave the venue before the lights get on.Founded in 1693, William & Mary is well known as an intellectual and cultural center in Virginia. I've the impression that credits become longer every day, exhaustively mentioning even the smallest contribution in full (catering, chauffeur, and so on). For that reason these credits seemed not overly long, unlike the feeling I have with other movies. Finally, a positive remark, in spite of everything: in the closing scene where Isaac's car is taken away to a garage or more probably a scrap yard (Isaac: "it just died on me"), we see the final credits roll by. As the film makers explained, that meaning of the word is obvious to all native English speakers. Lastly, the Q&A clarified the title of the film: Lemon stands for a lame person or thing, or something useless or crappy. It is something not happening to you, so you can feel good in spite of it, like feeling less lonely. There was a question about the family reunion, whether it was for real? The answer was that a comedy can make sweet what is shown on screen. They can quit class and run out, or behave otherwise very crazy. There was a very valid question about acting classes, coming down to: are they really that way? The answer was that teachers are very abusive and impulsive as a rule. There was a question about music and composer, but the answer escaped me.
LEMON MOVIE
For example: this movie resembles the lives of the film makers, feeling out of place (black, Jewish, etc), and it resembles their personalities too. Are these classes an artificial construct, introduced by the film makers, in order to make a point? (If yes, I missed it.) Or is it just a means to humiliate others or to showcase his own shortcomings? (Partly, see next paragraph.) The final Q&A clarified several things. There were some links between Isaac's life at home and the acting classes (like the "I I I" that offended his girlfriend in an early scene). Best example: his Paradise trilogy, especially Paradise: Love.) Anyway, apart from me the audience was not happy with this movie either, as it ranked a lowly 158th (out of 172) place for the audience award. Nevertheless, I always endure to the end and even watch these movies more than once. (Counter example: I love all the Ulrich Seidl movies, where you also find yourself embarrassed while watching, wondering whether you can stand it much longer. I know that many people delight (schadenfreude) in the suffering of others, but I'm not one of those. Now it is all just sad, nothing humorous about it. And it would certainly have helped when Isaac had only been just a tiny bit of sympathetic. Maybe I'm embarrassed seeing a definite loser on a definitely downhill path, where everything he does fails on him. Several people around me had a lot of laughs throughout the running time, but I had mostly trouble to produce even a tiny smile. Alas, I cannot think of many positive remarks about this film. This was the opening film of the Rotterdam film festival 2017 (), and as such may give rise to expectations of something remarkable or otherwise special.