Religion is a neutral ideal. Over the lifetime of this blog, I have been finding myself leaning further and further away from the staunchly atheist views I held as a teenager; hell, for all intents and purpose, film is my religion, and my position as an ordained Dudeist, for me at least, is an extension of that mindset. Not that I’ve just stopped noticing religion wielded as a cudgel to serve its own ends; I’ve reviewed quite a few examples of that in action, and I wasn’t up for that shit then or now. What I mean with that first sentence is that I don’t inherently see people with religious ideals as a bad thing; it all comes down to the results aimed for and gained through those ideals, same as any other. And honestly, it’s through that lens that this film in particular interests me.
A biopic on the legendary black abolitionist Harriet Tubman, the vision we get of Harriet is of the Moses of her time. We frequently see her in the middle of ‘spells’, the result of a head injury as a child, which play out like divine inspiration, giving DOP John Toll ample room for vivid imagery and editor Wyatt Smith a chance to flex some montage muscle. Through Cynthia Erivo’s soulful performance, it honestly helped crystalise a lot of the black church imagery I’ve been seeing in other films, which always wound up rubbing up against my understanding of Christianity as the religion of the oppressors, the tools of which were used to enforce slavery as part of ‘God’s will’.
But that’s part of the problem with a white-dominated narrative: It disregards how that same faith can be interpreted and refracted by other cultures. And as shown here, primarily through the use of spirituals and a nice inclusion of the classic spiritual Sinnerman, it’s refracted through their experience as a means to detail their existence under this institution and, more to the point, part of the larger code that kept the Underground Railroad running. In turn, it makes a righteous stand against the very idea that imprisonment is what God had planned for black people, as well as a rather refreshing reprieve from the usual when it comes to depictions of this era in American history. Also, any reason for Erivo to break out that winning singing voice is worthwhile in my book.
Outside of that theological framing, though, the bulk of the film plays out as one would expect from an Oscar-eyeing feature like this. The performances are mostly adequate (with the notable exception being Janelle Monae, who basically steals the show from even the likes of Erivo), the story is pretty straight-forward, and even the flashier moments like Harriet’s visions end up being undercut by how a fair bit of it gets recycled throughout, dampening the impact of the imagery somewhat. However, I’d still argue that this film is worth watching for Cynthia Erivo alone, who is seemingly incapable of giving a weak performance between this, Bad Times At The El Royale, and even Widows.
No comments:
Post a Comment