Wolfe, a terrific theater artist, seems to have instructed Winfrey, Byrne and the rest of the cast to play to some nonexistent rafters. With the exception of Renée Elise Goldsberry - who gives a half-saintly, half-corporeal dignity to Henrietta herself in a few brief flashback scenes - director and co-writer George C.
The intentions are good, but the problems are legion, from a score by Branford Marsalis that vacillates wildly between inventive jazziness and sugary treacle to flat, flailing cinematography by, of all people, Sofian El Fani, whose work here in no way approaches the level of his evocative efforts on the Cannes prize-winning features Blue Is the Warmest Color and Timbuktu. The chief issue, however, is the misguided choice to make Deborah and Rebecca’s relationship (the story’s heart and soul) predominantly farcical. And now that best-seller comes to HBO in a lukewarm 90-minute adaptation starring Oprah Winfrey as Henrietta’s daughter Deborah and Rose Byrne as Skloot. White journalist Rebecca Skloot aimed to remedy this situation with her 2010 book, a decade in the making, titled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. But while these “immortal” organisms helped give rise to pharmaceuticals that could combat diseases like cancer and AIDS, the woman from whom they came was never given her due.
This one set of cells, nicknamed HeLa, proved to be extremely resilient in laboratory settings, and it revolutionized medical research. There’s a great story to be told about Henrietta Lacks, the African-American tobacco farmer who, in 1951, had a tissue sample removed, without her knowledge or consent, from the malignant tumor on her cervix.
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