Small Axe (2020)

Small Axe is a remarkable collection of five feature-length movies directed by Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and released all at once last December, like a big Christmas gift after a hard year. A gift but hardly escapist. It's so big I don't even have that much to say about it, except yes, go take a look, don't miss any of it. Only the first, Mangrove, is longer than two hours, and the rest are closer to one. There's not a ringer in the bunch. Each is excellent and all involve the struggle of West Indians in the UK for better lives, equality, and fair treatment in the second half of the 20th century. Spoiler, they don't have easy lives. The British style of racism is real and terrible, genteel tea-sipping accents notwithstanding. After all when all is said and done the US inherited its racism in the first place largely from the British empire on which the sun never, etc. The first thing that struck me about most of these films, though I shouldn't have been surprised, is that police brutality problems look quite familiar in the UK too: systematic harassment, random beatings and murder, outrageous violations, and never any accountability. On that score most of the pictures in Small Axe are depressing, frustrating, and enraging. McQueen slips in an extraordinarily sweet one, Lovers Rock, which is about mating rituals and beloved reggae, soul, and other music. Actually all the music in all of them is wonderful. It's a joy. And there are fascinating character studies in every one, gripping and precise in their avenues into the problem: a celebrated court case in Mangrove, competing theories of policing in Red, White and Blue, how a writer grows up in and escapes from Brixton in Alex Wheatle, and the systemic racism in public education in Education. McQueen always finds great characters and he mixes up his genre touches well too, from court case to jukebox musical to a version of police procedural to biopic to coming-of-age tale. I took it easy and looked at one a day and that week ended way too fast. Small Axe may look large and imposing but it is worth every second.