Small Axe (2020)

[Earlier review here.]

Mangrove; Lovers Rock; Red, White and Blue; Alex Wheatle; Education; UK, 407 minutes

Director: Steve McQueen

Writers: Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Steve McQueen, Alastair Siddons, Courttia Newland

Photography: Shabier Kirchner

Music: Mica Levi

Editors: Chris Dickens, Steve McQueen

Cast: Letitia White, Shaun Parkes, Malachi Kirby, Rochenda Sandall, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr., Gary Beadle, Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn, Micheal Ward, Shaniqua Okwok, Francis Lovehall, Kedar Williams-Stirling, John Boyega, Steve Toussaint, Antonia Thomas, Tyrone Huntley, Sheyi Cole, Robbie Gee, Jonathan Jules, Elliot Edusah, Fumilayo Brown-Olateju, Kenyah Sandy, Sharlene Whyte, Tamara Lawrance, Josette Simon, Ryan Masher

“Small axe” is a reference to a Bob Marley song of the same name, with the line “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.” It’s another way of talking about incrementalism, in line with Martin Luther King’s “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And just so, director Steve McQueen with screenwriters Courttia Newland and Alastair Siddons have examined that arc closely as it applied to West Indians living in Britain in the late ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s. You might think the British are immune from racism, too genteel or something, but Small Axe and the five distinct films clustered under that banner beg to differ. They remind us not only that the British are the authors of a specific type of racism but that in large part the US digested it whole. The police brutality in Small Axe—one of the few constants across these stories—looks a lot like the police brutality we see in the US. It’s one of our inheritances from Britain, however much we rebelled against it in other ways.

The favorite of these stories in Small Axe by acclaim is almost certainly the second (though they do not need to be looked at in any order), Lovers Rock. In all the episodes music is a saving grace, a lifeline, and a solace and true source of joy, but nowhere is that emphasized more than in Lovers Rock, which is a straightforward depiction of a house party and its motley of attendees. The prep takes all day. The food looks amazingly good, most are dressed up in their best, and the music is everything. Two scenes—one involving “Silly Games” by Janet Kay and the other an unidentified dub rave-up played over and over—illustrate the point.

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.

Widows (2018)

From the preview, which I liked and motivated me to see Widows sooner rather than later, it looked like it might be a kind of all-star jamboree Ocean's Digits play, but with women. Except I knew that movie already came out last summer—it was called Ocean's Eight—and I knew it was unlikely that director and cowriter Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Hunger) would get involved in such a project anyway, paycheck or no. But it's still a high-stakes thriller all the way, and no cute bantering either. Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) is a master thief, the elaborate heist his specialty. His last job went south bad and now he's dead, appearing in tender flashbacks. All the cash he stole was burned in the firebombing and SWAT attack and now the offended owner of that cash has made it clear to Rawlings's widow Veronica (Viola Davis) that he expects her to make it right. Naturally she decides to reach out to the other widows in that last job and see if they're interested in pulling off a highly dangerous caper. Naturally they are. So Widows is indeed a jazzy caper movie, as advertised, but its detailed story, vivid imagery, and intricate motivations have all the icy precision of a season of The Wire unfolding. Set in Chicago, where life appears to be hard at all times but there's a lot of money (from drugs, from jewelry, from politics), Widows takes its time developing its many angles, letting the elements assemble one at a time, with a handful of surprises up its sleeve. It plays fast and loose with its own credibility here and there, the twists and turns can be a little too surprising, and more often convenient, and there are too many of them. After being a caper movie, however, and then after being a Steve McQueen art film, Widows turns to a third theory for existence—Oscar bait. By that I mean specifically the casting, with players lining up in their respective queues and working the paces: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting, etc. They are dazzling on paper and they're not bad in the picture either: Davis (Fences, The Help), Colin Farrell (In Bruges, Minority Report), Daniel Kaluuya (Black Panther, Get Out), Michelle Rodriguez (Avatar, multiple Fast and Furious movies), Elizabeth Debicki (The Great Gatsby, Guardians of the Galaxy), Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook), and Garret Dillahunt (Deadwood, No Country for Old Men), among others. Plus also, Robert Duvall (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) hams it up cackling Eli Wallach style and Neeson flexes his hardass bastard chops (for the 10 millionth time). Widows is a pretty good time, with enough substance, complexity, and inspired filmmaking that it might be worth seeing again too.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

USA / UK, 134 minutes
Director: Steve McQueen
Writers: John Ridley, Solomon Northup
Photography: Sean Bobbitt
Music: Hans Zimmer
Editor: Joe Walker
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Garrett Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Scoot McNairy, Lupita Nyong'o, Adepero Oduye, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, Michael Kenneth Williams, Alfre Woodard, Chris Chalk, Taran Killam, Bill Camp, Deneen Tyler

It's probably worth asking why so few honest movies about American slavery have been made, but the answer is pretty easy. White people in the United States still control most such decisions and they don't like being reminded of their heritage of slavery, arguing (dancing madly) that it's in the past and more or less best forgotten (because what's to be gained by remembering?), and besides, they (those alive now) didn't have anything to do with it. In the South, they like to call it their "peculiar institution," and to this day many believe that life for slaves was soft and easy, with all expenses paid—like living on welfare. It took a black British director with the name of a Hollywood icon to make an important step toward changing this, if it's possible to change this.

As a white person, I have been duly reluctant to look at 12 Years a Slave, approaching it both times I've seen it with sinking dread. To some degree that's based on qualms about director Steve McQueen, whose well-respected Hunger left me so cold I never bothered with Shame. Mostly, of course, the resistance is about the subject matter (see title). Based on Solomon Northup's slave narrative memoir written in the 19th century, it tells the story of a talented and accomplished Northern black free man who is tricked and abducted in Washington, D.C.—yes, that Washington, D.C., the seat of all liberty—and sold into slavery in Louisiana, where he experiences all we've heard about and some that perhaps we haven't. Though scrupulously accurate and with little tendency to sensationalize for cheap effect, it is harsh, explicit, and unrelenting.