Film Review: Small Axe: Mangrove (dir by Steve McQueen)

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Say whatever else you might want to say about 2020 as a cinematic year, at least it’s giving us five new films from Steve McQueen.

This British director is one of the most consistently interesting filmmakers working today and anytime we get new work for him, it’s a cause for celebration. His latest project is Small Axe, an anthology of five feature-length films that examines the real-life history of London’s West Indian community. In the UK, the film are premiering on the BBC while, here in the States, they’ll be premiering on Prime. Through mid-December, we’ll be getting a new Steve McQueen film every week.

The first of these films is Mangrove. The film opens in the late 60s, with activist Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes) opening a restaurant in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood. The restaurant is called The Mangrove and it quickly becomes a base for the community. It also becomes a target for the Metropolitan Police. PC Pulley (Sam Spruell) claims that the Frank has a history of tolerating petty crime and that the Mangrove is probably just a front for some nefarious operation. Of course, what quickly becomes obvious is that Pulley’s main problem with the Mangrove is that its owner is black and so are the majority of its customers. Pulley is an unrepentant racist, the type of man who sits in his patrol car and complains that the military hasn’t been called in to enforce the law in the neighborhood. (As obsessed as he is with the military, Pulley also says, with some pride, that he’s never actually served in the army.) When a new rookie shows up, Pulley informs him that his priority for the night is to arrest the first black person that he sees.

Every chance that he gets, Pulley raids the Mangrove. When Frank complains, he loses his liquor license. When the members of the community stage a peaceful protest (“Hands Off The Mangrove!” goes one chant), Frank and eight others are arrested and charged with inciting a riot and affray, charges that could lead to all of them spending several years in prison. (Affray is the legal term for “disturbing the peace.”) Among those arrested, along with Frank, are activist Darcus Howe (Malachi Kirby) and British Black Panther leader Altheia Jones-LeCointe (Letitita Wright). Both Darcus and Altheia insist on acting as their own counsel during the trial, giving them the chance to cross-examine the police and to also take their case directly to the jury.

Though Mangrove is a courtroom drama, the trial doesn’t being until almost an hour into the film’s running time. Wisely, McQueen instead spends the first sixty minutes of the film introducing us to the neighborhood surrounding the Mangrove and also allowing us to get to know the people who not only work there but also the ones who eat there. The film shows how, for a community of outsiders, the Mangrove became more than just a restaurant. It became a center for the entire neighborhood, a place where the members of the London’s West Indian community could safely gather. For someone like Pulley, the Mangrove was a symbol of everything that he couldn’t control and therefore, it had to be destroyed and its owners had to be humiliated. As well-handled as the courtroom scenes are, they would be considerably less effective if the film hadn’t shown us why it was felt that the Mangrove was something worth fighting for. When the Mangrove Nine go on trail, they’re not just nine people who have been unjustly accused. Instead, they represent an entire community that refuses to continue to bow down to their oppressors.

It’s an often effective film, one that is all the more powerful for being based on a true story. Much as he did with Shame, Steve McQueen makes effective use of the harsh and rather cold urban landscape that his characters inhabit. One needs only watch Frank walk down a dreary London street to understand why the Mangrove was so important to the community. As presented by McQueen, the Mangrove provides not only an escape from the harshness of the world but also a safe place to discuss how to make that world maybe a little bit less harsh for future generations. McQueen is brave enough to allow his camera to keep running, even beyond the point that most directors would have said “Cut.” McQueen shows us Frank yelling after being brutally pushed into a prison cell, as any director would. However, McQueen doesn’t cut away once Frank falls silent. Instead, his camera remains on Frank, making us feel his isolation and his feeling of hopelessness. It takes just a minute to go from the exhilaration of hearing Frank curse out his jailers to the horror of realizing that Frank is basically at their mercy.

For the most part, the actors make a strong impression, with the only false note coming from Rochenda Sandall, who plays Darcus’s partner and often seems to be performing in a different movie from everyone else. Malachi Kirby and Shaun Parkes have several strong moments as Darcus and Frank while Sam Spruell plays Pulley as being an all-too familiar monster. That said, the film is pretty much stolen by Letitia Wright, who brings both fury and wit to the role of Altheia. Whether she’s exposing the Crown’s medical examiner as a fraud or angrily reprimanding a defendant who is considering pleading guilty, Letitia Wright dominates every scene in which she appears.

Is Mangrove eligible for the Oscars? Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be. But, with the rule changes and the fact that Mangrove was not only selected to compete at Cannes (before Cannes was cancelled, of course) but that it also opened the BFI London Film Festival, I think a case can be made for considering Mangrove to be a feature film as opposed to being a television movie. This is a strange year so who knows? Personally, I think Mangrove deserves to be considered. If it’s not nominated for any Oscars, it’ll definitely be nominated for the Emmys. That’ll be determined in the future. For now, it can be viewed on Prime.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Darkest Hour (dir by Joe Wright)

Posted on January 2, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2017 best picture nominee, Darkest Hour, opens with Europe at war.

While the United States remains officially neutral, the Nazi war machine marches across Europe. After years of appeasement, the United Kingdom has finally declared war on Germany but the feeling in Parliament is that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) is not strong enough to take on Hitler. When the Opposition demands that Chamberlain resign, Chamberlain does so with the hope that he’ll be replaced by Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane). Like Chamberlain, Halifax continues to hold out hope for some sort of negotiated peace with the Germans. However, Halifax declines, saying that it’s not yet his time. Instead, Chamberlain’s successor is Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman), the only Conservative that the Opposition is willing to accept as Prime Minister.

(This is a bit of invention on the part of the filmmakers. In reality, the Opposition did demand Chamberlain’s resignation but they did not stipulate that he could only be replaced by Churchill.)

No one is particularly enthusiastic about the idea of Winston Churchill becoming prime minister. Chamberlain and Halifax both view him as being a war monger who is so determined to prove himself as a military strategist that he’ll sacrifice thousands of British lives just for his own glory. The King (Ben Mendelsohn) worries that Churchill is an unreliable radical and he still resents Churchill for defending the marriage of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Churchill is regularly described as being a buffoon and an eccentric. He’s quick-tempered and obsessive about things that many people would consider to be of no importance. When we first see Churchill, he’s making his new assistant (played by Lily James) cry because he’s discovered that she single-spaced a memo as opposed to double-spacing it. The only people who seem to like Winston are the member of his family and even his loyal wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) is frequently frustrated with him.

Churchill’s enemies are not impressed by his first actions as prime minister. They listen in disgust as he lies about the prospects of victory in France. They are shocked by his refusal to even consider a negotiated peace. They are horrified by his ruthless pragmatism as he willing sacrifice a thousand British soldiers in order to save several thousand more at Dunkirk. An aristocrat who has been rejected by his peers, Churchill is betrayed by those serving in his government but beloved by the people who ride the Underground and who are being asked to potentially sacrifice everything to defeat Hitler’s war machine.

As directed by Joe Wright, Darkest Hour plays out like a dream, with 1940s Britain recreated in hues of black and gray. The film’s visual palette is so dark that, at times, Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill appears to literally emerge out of the shadows, an almost mythical figure who symbolizes a society in transition. In many ways, Churchill is an old-fashioned Edwardian who nostalgically remembers the glory days of the British Empire. At the same time, Churchill is enough of a realist to see that the world is changing and, regardless of who wins the war, that it will never be the same. Churchill is enough of an aristocrat to be unaware of what a backwards V-sign means but also enough of a commoner to laugh uproariously upon learning its meaning.

Churchill spends a good deal of the film bellowing and, at times, it’s easy to see why many initially dismissed him as being a buffoon. Indeed, in Darkest Hour, Churchill frequently is a buffoon. But he’s also a pragmatic leader who truly loves his country and its people. Oldman has a lot of scenes where he’s loud but he also has other scenes in which he reveals Churchill to be a thoughtful man who loves his country and who is determined to win a war that many believe to be unwinnable. When he’s reduced to calling the United States and has to pathetically beg President Roosevelt to honor a treaty, you feel for Churchill and you share his frustration as he tries to get the flaky FDR to understand the reality of what’s happening in Europe. When Churchill explains why he’s willing to sacrifice a thousand in order to save 41,000 more, Oldman delivers his lines with a steely certainty. As played by Oldman, Churchill knows what has to be done, even if no one else has any faith in him.

It’s a good film, even if it ultimately feels more like a showcase for one actor than a cohesive narrative. The rest of the cast does a good job, especially Ronald Pickup as the haunted and dying Neville Chamberlain. But ultimately, Darkest Hour is Gary Oldman’s show. That’s appropriate. Much as how Churchill dominated British politics, Gary Oldman has dominated British acting. Not surprisingly, Gary Oldman won his first Oscar for playing Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. The film was also nominated for best picture but it lost to Shape of Water.

Film Review: Suffragette (dir by Sarah Gavron)

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s funny (or perhaps not) when you think about it. I’ve always taken my right to vote (and, in theory at least, have some say over how I’m governed) for granted. Even before I turned 18 and officially registered, I never had any doubt that, some day, I would be able to vote for President and every other elected office. (And, even before that, I voted in student council and mock presidential elections.) Voting is something that I so take for granted that, even when I cast my first official vote in the 2004 Presidential election, it didn’t really mean much to me. Given the choice between Bush and Kerry, I wrote in the name of Charles Jay, the candidate of the Personal Choice Party. I knew nothing about Mr. Jay but I had come across his name online and I liked the idea of personal choice and I thought it would make for a funny story to tell all of my friends who were actually taking the election seriously. (Even back then, I enjoyed annoying people who actually cared.) Essentially, I threw my vote away and I did it without a second thought.

Of course, what I didn’t understand at that time was that the right to vote was something that many brave women had fought for, gone to prison for, and even died for. If I had lived before 1920, I would not have had the right to vote and I certainly would not have had the opportunity to so casually toss my vote away. Women in the U.S. did not win the right to vote until 1920. But before everyone starts in with the usual “America is so backwards!” crap, consider this. In Britain, women did not win the right to vote until 1928. Women could not vote in France until 1944 and Switzerland waited until 1984! Last year, women in Saudi Arabia voted for the first time.

The struggle of British women to gain equal rights under the law is the subject of the film Suffragette. Maud Watts (played by Carey Mulligan, my generation’s Audrey Hepburn) is a laundress living in London in 1912. She spends her day working for little money and for a male boss who, for years, has sexually harassed and abused the women working under him. Unlike a lot of the women who work at the laundry, Maud has a stable home life. She is a devoted mother and her husband, Sonny (Ben Whishaw), is supportive.

Or, at least, he seems to be at first. Things chance once Maud gets involved in the suffragette movement. It’s not just that her lecherous boss laughs at her for wanting to be treated equally, That, we expect. No, what is truly infuriating is to watch how quickly Sonny goes from being a loving husband to a monster, the type who forbids Maud from seeing her own son and then callously puts the boy up for adoption. Confronted by his wife’s demand to be treated as his equal, Sonny reveals himself to be no better than the casual misogynists that Maud must deal with, on a daily basis, at work. Raised on a diet of films where men come to their senses and justice (and love) somehow prevails, I kept expecting Sonny to see the error of his ways or for Maud to at least be reunited with her son. Needless to say, none of that happened. This is a film that never lets us forget the sacrifice involved in fighting for equal rights.

Instead, having lost everything that previously defined her life, Maud throws herself into the battle for women’s rights. And, as Suffragette makes clear, that meant a lot more than just winning the right to vote.

It’s an inspiring story and both Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham-Carter (who plays another suffragette) give powerful performances. At the same time — and this is something that many critics need to understand and acknowledge — you can love a film for what it has to say while, at the same time, acknowledging that it doesn’t totally work as a piece of cinema. Suffragette is not a perfect film and reviewing it, I found myself torn between praising the film’s message and criticizing director Sarah Gavron’s frequently uninspired cinematic technique. (From a strictly cinematic point of view, Suffragette will play better on television than on a big movie screen.)

Perhaps for me, the film’s great weakness was casting Meryl Streep in the role of real-life activist Emmeline Pankhurst. Ms. Pankhurst was the leader of the Suffragette movement and is an inspiring historical figure. Unfortunately, as soon as Meryl shows up for her four-minute cameo, it becomes impossible to see her as being anyone other than Meryl Streep, a wealthy white woman who — unlike the real-life Ms. Pankhurst — will never be sent to prison for demanding the right to vote. When Meryl shows up as Ms. Pankhurst, it takes the viewer out of the historical reality of the film. You’re no longer watching a group of brave women risking their lives and demanding to be treated equally under the law. Instead, you’re just watching a Meryl Streep cameo.

Throughout the film, Maud stays in a succession of safe houses and decrepit offices. She always has a picture of Ms. Pankhurst near her and occasionally, she looks to it for strength and guidance. However, since the picture of Ms. Pankhurst is really just a picture of Meryl Streep, it again serves to take the viewer out of the film. Perhaps if Meryl Streep had more screen time, she would be able to get us to think of her as being Ms. Pankhurst but since she’s only onscreen for four minutes, she instead just serves to distract from the film’s message.

(Personally, I would have cast either Emma Thompson and Kristin Scott Thomas in the role of Ms. Pankhurst, two great actresses who would could have portrayed her charisma without being quite as distracting as Meryl Streep.)

As I said earlier, Suffragette is not a perfect film but it does teach an important lesson that needs to be learned, especially by those of us who occasionally take our rights for granted. It’s a film that reminds us that years ago, brave women fought for everything that we have now and it’s a film that encourages us to keep fighting. It’s not a perfect film but it’s a film that deserves to be seen.

Shattered Politics #89: Hyde Park on Hudson (dir by Roger Michell)

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Is there anything more frustrating than a film that should have been good but yet somehow turned out to be … well, to be rather awful?

Case in point: 2012’s Hyde Park On Hudson. In this slow-moving and almost painfully old-fashioned film, Bill Murray plays President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When the film opens in 1939, Roosevelt is being visited by his sixth cousin, Margaret (Laura Linney). It’s been several years since Roosevelt and Margaret last saw each other. Franklin’s mother (Elizabeth Wilson) thinks that Margaret’s company could cheer up her melancholy son. So, FDR and Margaret go out for a drive and, sitting atop a nice green hill, Margaret gives him a hand job.

And it is the most stately and respectable hand job to ever be quaintly portrayed in an American film.

Anyway, the rest of the film deals with FDR’s affair with Margaret. Eventually, Margaret discovers that FDR has many mistresses but, before she does that, she helps FDR to charm England’s King George VI (Samuel West). In the days leading up to World War II, George and his wife (Olivia Colman) visit Roosevelt out at his Hyde Park estate. As we all know from watching The King’s Speech, George is insecure about his stutter. But, fortunately, FDR points out that, despite the fact that he’s in a wheelchair, people still view him as being a strong leader and therefore, people will view George in the same way, regardless of his stutter.

And, speaking as a former stutterer, I have to say that it’s amazing to witness how poorly Hyde Park On Hudson deals with subject matter that was so brilliantly handled in The King’s Speech.

When I first heard about Hyde Park On Hudson, I had high hopes for it. After all, I love history. I love royalty. I love gossip and I love scandal. And, really. FDR was one of our more gossip-worthy Presidents, a spoiled rich kid who could not reach his full potential until after he was struck down by polio and who regularly cheated on his wife while battling both the Great Depression and the Nazis. FDR was a dynamic and controversial figure and none of that comes through in Hyde Park on Hudson.

(Seriously, Bill Murray is totally wasted in this film. If you’re going to cast an iconic actor in an iconic role, at least give him some good dialogue.)

In the end, Hyde Park on Hudson fails because it’s just too respectful. It’s a slow, visually unimaginative film that manages to make an exciting time feel dull. FDR deserves better and so does Bill Murray.