Magical Negro fable

Rating: 5/10 (13 June 2014)

The story is told by Hardy Greaves who growing up in Savannah, Georgia as a child idolized golfer Rannulph Junah (Matt Damon). Rannulph had married wealthy Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron). However he returns from WWI broken and disappears. Adele moves on with her father's business to build a golf course in 1928. She finds Rannulph return to town but a year later, the great depression hit. The golf course is complete but the financial strain drive Adele's father to suicide. Adele struggles to keep the golf course open by organizing an exhibition between Bobby Jone (Joel Gretsch) and Walter Hagen (Bruce McGill) for a prize of $10k. In a town meeting, people demand for a local golfer but the drunken Captain Junah is reluctant to play. While trying to get back his swing late one night, Bagger Vance (Will Smith) asks for a job to caddy for the big game.
It takes a bit of exposition to get started. Charlize Theron and Matt Damon starts off with an interesting period piece. Then Will Smith comes in and it slowly becomes obvious that this is some kind of Magical Negro that he's playing. This is apparently a fable where racism is not much mentioned nor noticed. It demands that the viewer forget any historical realism since this is a fable after all.
The best thing about this is that Robert Redford has made a beautiful looking movie. It is however slow moving, and lacks the needed energy to keep up the pace for the whole 2 hours. My biggest problem is that the fable needs much more magic especially visually. Redford does a lot of speeding up the clouds and clouds rolling by and shots of nature and shots of sky and various other in-camera moves to denote magic. It needs something more. It needs something much more. It needs to put this movie definitively into the magical territories. This is not the simple period piece that Redford is creating. (small unimportant spoiler: even the last scene is too uncertain. Bagger Vance is waving old Hardy Greaves over. Redford really needs to spell out what's going on there.)
The acting seems fine to me. Matt Damon and Charlize Theron have some nice scenes together. They have the best fun and I enjoy them the most. I'm not able to tell if the accents are accurate but I don't think it's so obvious that it would offend anybody other than southerners. Will Smith is playing someone unreal. He is almost otherworldly. If this isn't a fable, I'm tempted to say that he's playing it too fake. In the end, it's an uneven viewing experience.