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After viewing Jonathan Demme’s film Beloved, I felt as I usually do upon watching a movie based on a novel, disappointed. Films rarely live up to the expectations set up by a great novel and this is due to the limitations of working with film as a medium. This paper will attempt to exploit these limitations and explain why Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, is superior to its film version. A major flaw of the film Beloved is that it did not hint at many of the underlying themes that are ever present in the novel. While the film focused on the theme of the past, it barely, if at all, hinted at the issue of race as well as its effects on slavery, which was a major theme of Morrison’s novel. Likewise, the theme of the morality of Sethe’s murderous actions was covered in a fifteen minute dialogue between Sethe and Paul D despite the fact that it was a major issue that was questioned throughout much of the novel. Morrison’s coverage of controversial themes provides for a more compelling piec