Postwar life in Ohio contains its peaceful moments, of bringing in the laundry or shelling peas, but the house at 124 Bluestone Road is forever saddened by what Sethe did. Was it wrong? Yes, said the law: She was guilty of destroying property. The law did not see her or her child as human beings, and thus did not consider the death to be murder. In a society with those values, to kill can be seen as life-affirming.

These are all feelings that churn up after the film. “Beloved,” film and novel, is not a genre ghost story but a work that uses the supernatural to touch on deep feelings. Like The Turn of the Screw, it has no final explanation. Spirit manifestations come from madness and need not follow logical agendas. It is a remarkable and brave achievement for Demme and his producer and star, Winfrey, to face this difficult material head-on and not try to dumb it down into a more accessible, less evocative form.

Winfrey plays Sethe as a woman who can sometimes brighten and relax, but whose spirit always returns to the sadness of what she did, and the hatred of those who forced her to it. It is a brave, deep performance. Supernatural events whirl around her, but she is accustomed to that; she's more afraid of her own memories. Thandie Newton, as Beloved, is like an alien. (I was reminded of Jeff Bridges in “Starman.”) She brings a difficult character to life by always remembering that the tortured spirit inside was still a baby when it died. Danny Glover, big and substantial, is the pool of caring that Sethe needs if she is ever to heal. Kimberly Elise, as Sethe's grown daughter, plays the character as a battered child--battered not by her mother but by the emotional maelstrom of 124 Bluestone Road. And the legendary Beah Richards has an electric screen presence as Baby Suggs, Sethe's mother-in-law, who presides over haunting spiritualist ceremonies.

Demme's direction tells the story through mood and accumulation of incident, rather than through a traditional story line. His editor, Carol Littleton, takes on the difficult task of helping us find our way through the maze. Some audience members, I imagine, will not like it--will find it confusing or too convoluted. And it does not provide the kind of easy lift at the end that they might expect. Sethe's tragic story is the kind where the only happy ending is that it is over.

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