'Seberg' is an unsatisfying movie about a fascinating subject

Given the unrest and outrage all around the country in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis -- you'd think Seberg, a biopic (currntly on Amazon Prime) about the white actress Jean Seberg who became a target of the FBI after she became the financial backer of black radicals.

But unfortunately, it's too lifeless and ordinary. Kristen Stewart, who plays Seberg, never stops seeming like a child playing dress up. She's a good actress but she is also so contemporary that I never bought her as a '60s radical or as a woman increasingly descending into paranoid panics.

In one of the movie's more effective scenes her character is accused of being a cultural 'tourist' a black female rival. The insult doesn't feel that wrong and the movie doesn't have a clear point of view either way on her activities, it's passive about what ought to make it powerful.

How about a Fred Hampton movie Hollywood?

The movie also presents Seberg fully formed as the ultimate woke white girl. There doesn't need to be some profound explanation, but there does need to be some context for why this white woman took tremendous risks with her money, career and personal life, all in the same of solidarity with the black power movement.

It could and should have been a really interesting look at the perils of trying to be an ally but also an expose on how the justice department has been historically been used as cudgel to ruin the life of lefty people who have committed no crime.

The film doesn't even take the time to establish how and why Seberg was a star. The film recreates moments from her most famous role -- in Jean-Luc Godard's groundbreaking film Breathless -- but if you aren't already familiar with that movie or her -- it'll be meaningless.

Also sketchily drawn are the black activists who Seberg literally and figuratively got into bed with. None of them -- including Anthony Mackie who brings nothing new or attractive to his role of a activist who seduces her. We get very little if any cultural context -- what were the Black Panthers' goals? Why were the FBI obsessed with destroying them? I know the answers to this question because I've studied it but if you're coming into this cold -- as I imagine many young Stewart fans will -- you will learn nothing.

That's especially disappointing at a time where the nation is grappling with how best to elevate black voices -- it feels awkward to be reveling in a white woman's discomfort at being monitored by the authorities, when black people were literally being killed by them.

Worst of all though, the movie is boring. The costumes are gorgeous but there is no there there.

A very good movie could be made about this subject -- maybe one more focused with a stronger point of view. If Jean Seberg really was a sincere ally and radical -- I'd like to interrogate why and how she used her clout for good. And if she was just a dilettante, I think that's interesting too.

Instead we have this half baked bio -- which ends so abruptly that I found myself wondering why it even need to exist in the first place.

How about a really good biopic about the Black Panthers? Jean Seberg could be a not insignificant character in it -- but the story of how they openly sought and recruited white allies is an interesting one that hasn't really interrogated in the movies yet. Sigh. Next time...