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Do you have to agree with a film’s politics to enjoy it? I don’t think so
There is some hope again for the American box office.
It’s certainly not coming from the Marvel Universe, whose box office doesn’t cover their production and marketing costs. Instead, that idiot Minecraft film did amazing business because it targeted an underserved audience.
Another film, one that dominated the last two weeks and continues to do well, did so by using an odd new approach: telling a new story well.
It’s so crazy, it just might work.
Sinners is an R-rated vampire film, written and directed by Ryan Coogler (Creed, Black Panther). The film is set in the South in 1932. Twin brothers, “Smoke” and “Stack” (both characters played, well, by Michael B. Jordan), have a dream of starting their own “Juke,” a honky-tonk for blacks only.
The brothers have a colorful history. They served in the Army in World War I and then served in Al Capone’s army in Chicago. They’ve put enough money away to buy an old mill that they hope to make into their nightclub, but the former mill owner is a Grand Dragon of the KKK. He wants to take his mill back by force.
Which turns out to be the least of the brothers’ problems.
Vampires don’t show up in the film for nearly an hour, but when they do, they provide a unique and unnerving presence.
I’ve already spoiled enough, so I won’t spoil more. If you like this kind of film, you’ll enjoy Sinners. I should note, though, that the film could almost be considered a musical for the way it utilizes Blues, Gospel, Folk, and even some Gaelic music.
That said, I’d like to talk a bit about the film’s theology and politics. It’s rather “woke,” but for me, that doesn’t kill the film because the message serves the story, rather than the story being at the service of the message.
The real protagonist of the film is Sammie (Miles Caton), the son of a preacher who is also a savant with Blues music. He’s a singer and guitar player, but his father wants him to stay home and play his music in the church. He wants to play at his cousins’ honky-tonk. An old Blues piano player, Slim (Delroy Lindo), supports his choice. Slim badmouths the White man’s religion (Christianity), which he says was “forced upon” Black slaves. He urges Sammie to pursue the music that is true to their African tradition.
This idea of Christian culture and traditional African cultures (exemplified through music) being in opposition is stupid in so many ways.
Yes, there were slave owners who hoped their slaves would be pacified by Christianity, but there were also slave owners who refused to allow slaves to learn to read the Bible and tried to keep slaves from having access to the full Gospel.
In spite of both attempts to restrict them, slaves identified with the Jewish slaves in Egypt and the Exodus in the Bible gave slaves hope of freedom. The abolition movement was a Christian movement. Before Christianity, slavery was assumed to be a natural part of the human condition. Slavery was once practiced in every culture, including African culture.
There is also an unspoken assumption that Christianity is European, the white man’s religion. But Christianity actually took hold in parts of Africa long before it came to England. Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century; England didn’t adopt Christianity until the 6th century.
Even sillier is the idea that the music of African Americans of the 1930s was all their own, unspoiled by European Americans. In the film, Sammie has guitar skills that are perhaps of a supernatural nature, capable of bringing forth musicians of his cultural past (and future). But the guitar he plays doesn’t have its roots in Africa. The guitar probably has its origins in Spain in the 12th century. Once slaves came to America, their music took on qualities of European American music, which was in turn influenced by African American music.
The film seems to advocate the benefits of segregation. Smoke and Stack want to have a Juke free of the White man. On the other hand, the chief vampire, Remmick (Jack O’Connell), advocates the brotherhood of man. He claims that all will be equal as vampires, Black and White. In some ways, he sounds like a Great Society Liberal. Like Jordan Peele’s Get Out, there seems to be an argument that the platitudes of White Liberals are not to be trusted. The vampires of the film even maintain some of their “Christian” past. They happily recite the Lord’s Prayer along with Sammie. (But strangely, “Holy Water” can still be used against them, which makes no sense.)
This Black separatism is a doctrine of much modern Leftism and is at odds with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the teaching of men like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. This is why modern universities look to provide separate dining tables, dorms, holidays, etc., to ethnic students. Many modern Leftists have embraced the old doctrine of “Separate but Equal.”
I think there are benefits of seeing an artistic presentation of such views – false views, I believe – in creative and entertaining ways, opening doors for discussion. This is a film worth seeing, even though some of the premises on which it is based are false.
(And if you do decide to see this film, know that the story is not done when the credits begin. Unlike Marvel films, this post-credits sequence is not a commercial for an upcoming film, but rather tells more of this film’s story. So stick around.)
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A great review, ECS! I agree; I’ll watch a film that I disagree with politically (how much choice do I really have?) but I’ll give a hip of the hat to any film, even a neutral-to-opposing one, that is honest, original, not a cliche.
I also feel the same way. I don’t want all films to have the same point of view, but I do want them to be creative, well done and entertaining. Even though woke films annoy the heck out of me, they annoy me less if they are sincere, i.e., the wokeness is not interjected to lecture me or virtue signal, but to drive the story.
So thanks for the review. I find Michael Jordan a very compelling actor.
I’ve watched a lot of Soviet-era Russian films that I enjoyed even though the politics were not agreeable to me. I can’t remember when I last watched an American film. Maybe it was Alice in Wonderland, which I see came out in 2010. I think I was on a bicycle outing in Indiana with Mrs Subcomandante and there was a rain day. Or something like that. It wasn’t worth the trouble.
The movie, Hero, had odious politics that justified Chinese-Communism but I still liked it.
Same
Thanks for the recommendation. There are so many bad movies out there.
Three weeks ago I took the grands to see Minecraft and surprisingly enjoyed it. The movie is stupidly over-the-top slapstick and I had zero expectations but I really liked it. The grands enjoyed it and thought my raucous laughter was funny as well. The Dog Man movie was delightfully funny as well. But adults should go with low expectations for both, it helps make the movie more enjoyable when you’re not expecting it.
I grew up in the DC area where no one ever agreed with me, or each other, on anything, ever. I started delivering interpretations of cultural artifacts tortured to support my own views. I was inspired by the many ludicrous Marxist efforts to do the same with things like John Wayne movies and Heinlein novels. In 2001, Dave’s banishment by HAL and subsequent light show was a celebration of the exclusion of the Left from society by shunning and the consumption of psychedelic drugs. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the hero is the Indian who escapes the oppressive arms of the therapeutic state, whose objective is revealed through the arc of McMurphy. The Indian frees McMurphy before escaping himself. Screeds aimed at the hearts of HHH and McGovern, represented by Nurse Ratched.
Thank You for Smoking was the only realistic picture of DC in 20th Century letters.
Thanks for the review. It’s not really up my alley anyway, but a few commentators consider the film not just woke but racist. Yes or no?
I don’t have a problem with watching a film with a political bent I disagree with as long as it’s a good story with good acting and a good plot. OTOH, I can’t think of any examples at the moment . . .
Our 10 year old grandson chose to take 7 of his friends to Minecraft instead of a traditional birthday party. I was “recruited” to play the chaperon. During the movie I looked down the row. All of them sat there in slack-jawed wonder.
Yes, recruitment implies some free will. I’m guessing there was very little free will.
Didn’t you enjoy the Jennifer Coolidge bits? I don’t think the children understood why I was laughing so hard. But they were happy that grandpa was enjoying the show.
What I hate in a movie or television show is being jolted out of the show by false notes. I can tolerate a few much as one would take in a musical performance with some mistakes in them.
I can ignore a subtle message but a blatant and recurring message is patronizing and infuriating. Unless it’s a message I agree with in which case it is merely patronizing.
I hear you. I can’t remember what movie I was watching several years ago, when I thought they may as well have inserted a John Kerry for president commercial in the middle of it. They could have named the chief villain G.W. Bush, and the message wouldn’t have been more obvious.
It’s nice to have beautiful cinematography and a luxurious soundtrack, but when they hit me over the head with their ideological message, it takes me out of the movie.
My wife likes the British mini-series A Gentleman in Moscow. It’s well made, by and large, without much of a political angle. The Communists are the bad guys, but Communism itself is barely mentioned as what makes them the bad guys. OK, they chose not to spell it out.
But there are two black characters that destroy the suspension of disbelief. Mind you, there were a few blacks in Moscow in the early years of the revolution; African diplomats, students, overseas radicals. But to my astonishment, both men are supposed to be accepted as Russians; it’s stunt casting. One dreadlocked in particular is ridiculous as a Russian nobleman. The other one could almost get away with it, except one lady detects that he’s gay, about one sentence into a conversation.
This is nuts. Maybe Danny DeVito should play MLK Jr. Or how about Lucy Liu as Ladybird Johnson?
Or John Wayne as Genghis Khan.
“A Khan’s gotta do what a Khan’s gotta do, pilgrim.”
Danny DeVito could play Wilt Chamberlain in a Netflix biopic.
[Duplicate post]
It was funnier the first time.
That’s what I get for posting from my phone and only having 2 bars.
An old favorite:
And of course, Charlize Theron is also “African-American.”
Which reminds me of a past Olympics where some sportscasters, I think from ABC, referred to athletes from Ghana or something as “African-American.”
Remember the series “The Americans” – it was a good show, but the protagonists were soviet spies in DC during the Reagan era.