{"id":2569,"date":"2021-04-15T18:31:47","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T18:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2569"},"modified":"2021-04-16T10:58:30","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T10:58:30","slug":"the-oscars-2021-judas-and-the-black-messiah-minari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/04\/15\/the-oscars-2021-judas-and-the-black-messiah-minari\/","title":{"rendered":"The Oscars 2021: Judas and the Black Messiah, Minari"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Judas and the Black Messiah<\/strong><\/p>\n

This can\u2019t help but call to mind Spike Lee\u2019s BlackKklansman<\/em> for me. Both stories are about the infiltration by law enforcement of an organisation concerned with race in America, and both attempt to walk the line between true life stories, social commentary and thriller movie clich\u00e9s. BlackKlansman<\/em> is hardly subtle, and the final act of the story does become a slightly ridiculous race-against-time trip to movieland \u2013 before the closing montage slams the real message home. Judas<\/em> (written by Will Berson and Shaka King and directed by King) is a bit more subversive, a bit more sly, and I think I very slightly preferred it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s blessed by some powerhouse performances. On the one hand, we have Daniel Kaluuya, cementing his reputation as one of our most gifted actors. In Get Out<\/em> he seemed vulnerable, almost spindly. Here, his doughy physique gives him massive presence and power \u2013 he dominates every room he\u2019s in, physically, vocally and emotionally. Opposite him, in a less showy but more complex part, is Lakeith Stanfield, fulfilling all the promise he showed in Sorry to Bother You<\/em>. His nervy, twitchy Bill O\u2019Neal is nabbed passing himself off as an FBI agent and made to pass on information about the Black Panthers, which Jesse Plemons\u2019 agent laconically sells to Stanfield as as much of a threat to civil rights as the KKK.<\/p>\n

And while much of this film is a straight Fred Hampton biopic and much else (as noted) is fairly familiar from films such as Donnie Brasco<\/em> or The Departed<\/em> or the aforementioned BlackKlansman<\/em>, it\u2019s all extremely well structured, shot, acted and assembled. Where it becomes at first queasily fascinating and then shockingly tragic, is in the interplay between Stanfield and Plemons and then Plemons and Martin Sheen \u2013 playing J Edgar Hoover like a cross between Nixon and The Penguin.<\/p>\n

Telling the story of an extraordinary person through the eyes of an outsider is often a smart move. We can\u2019t know what it was like to be Fred Hampton (or Gandhi, or Stephen Hawking or Charlie Chaplin) but when the narrative unfolds this way, we can know what it was like to be in their presence. And it helps that \u2013 as with Selma<\/em> a few years ago \u2013 much of the true story was not known to me. However, I still rank this film as \u201cvery good\u201d rather than \u201cmasterpiece\u201d. It\u2019s a smartly written and directed slice of highly relevant history, with an outstanding performance from Kaluuya, and contains many memorable moments. But it doesn\u2019t quite contain that extra little innovation, flourish or profundity that would elevate it to the absolute top ranks.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019d say pretty much the same thing about Minari<\/em>, a film which otherwise resembles Judas<\/em> in almost no way at all. Taking inspiration from his own childhood, Lee Isaac Chung writes and directs this tale of the immigrant Yi family abandoning their life in California, where father Jacob has become a chicken-sexing savant, to instead farm a few acres of Arkansas in the hope of taking a bit more control over their lives.<\/p>\n

Whereas Judas<\/em> presents some fairly clearly defined evildoers, one of the fascinating things about Minari<\/em> is that there are no bad actors. Things go well and things go poorly for the Yis, but there are no moustache-twirling villains threatening them with eviction, no racist thugs who beat them up. There aren\u2019t even thoughtlessly cruel classmates who taunt the children. Things go well and things go poorly because that\u2019s what life is like. The trick (and it\u2019s a good one) is to put that simple truth on the screen and make it interesting, and not use \u201cthat\u2019s what life is like\u201d as a pretext for a story which doesn\u2019t build, or move or have a reason to end. Without a trace of artifice, Minari<\/em> has all of these. Like Nomadland<\/em>, it\u2019s a delicate film, built out of small human moments. Unlike Nomadland<\/em>, none of those moments ever feels without purpose or meaning.<\/p>\n

The cast is effortlessly convincing. Winsome Alan Kim as little David and elderly Youn Yuh-jung as grandma are mopping up most the awards love, and Steven Yeun is the only familiar face from English-language fare thanks to his years of service on The Walking Dead<\/em>. But I was constantly drawn to Han Ye-ri as Monica, the mother of the family, who manages to create a version of the wife-who-opposes-her-husband\u2019s-desire-for-adventure which never feels like a shrewish clich\u00e9. She\u2019s the glue that holds this family together and this performance similarly binds the film together.<\/p>\n

That only leaves me with The Father<\/em> and Sound of Metal<\/em> from the Best Picture nominees but I\u2019m going to try and take in a few others like One Night in Miami<\/em>, Wolfwalkers<\/em> and Ma Rainey\u2019s Black Bottom<\/em> if time allows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judas and the Black Messiah This can\u2019t help but call to mind Spike Lee\u2019s BlackKklansman for me. Both stories are about the infiltration by law enforcement of an organisation concerned with race in America, and both attempt to walk the line between true life stories, social commentary and thriller movie clich\u00e9s. BlackKlansman is hardly subtle, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,11],"tags":[13,526,19],"class_list":["post-2569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-cinema","category-culture","tag-oscars","tag-oscars-2021","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-Fr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2569"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2577,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569\/revisions\/2577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}