Film Analysis: A Long Way Home

In the movie, A Long Way Home, Odessa Cotter is a strong willed, black house maid who works for the Thompson family. Miriam Thompson, the mother, is a kind, classy, well-to-do white woman whose main care in the world is making sure she always has a maid, no matter what she has to do. Norman Thompson, the father, is a good man whose judgment becomes burdened by his little brother, Tunker Thompson, who is a snarky, sleazy, racist pig. When racial tension rises, Miriam puts her personal relationship with her maid, Odessa before her personal relationship with her husband, Norman after a boycott of the public transportation system explodes into a southern debacle. It all began in the year 1955, on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama; Rosa Parks did what no other colored person would have dreamed of doing: she sat at the front of the bus. At this time, segregation was on the rise and whites and black were separated in every possible way. Blacks were not allowed to sit at the front of the bus, they were not …show more content…
She tells him that she does not care for his, nor anyone else’s opinion that she will do what SHE believes is the proper thing to do. This is definitely the climax of the movie, the major turning point. She and Normans relationship is tested as they enter a stage of no communicating as a result of Norman’s racism that he cannot overcome, not even for his wife and family.
After that, Miriam is picking up Odessa every day and brings her to work. They drive pass the carpool started for blacks to avoid the public transportation. Anyone who helps with the carpooling might as well be dead to society. They become outcasts for siding with the "negroes." One day, Odessa decides that she wants to join the carpool. She genuinely believes it to be the right thing to do, therefore, she signs up to be a driver. She begins carrying more and more black people to their jobs every