Ryan Coogler’s Strikingly Personal “Black Panther”

This post won’t focus very much on the significant cultural, sociological, or political aspects of the release and reception of the new Marvel film, Black Panther, which have been set out by a number of writers for other publications in South Africa (and, indeed, across the world). My position of privilege in this regard notwithstanding, I had my own reasons to be excited for the movie when I heard about it: Having seen Ryan Coogler’s previous film, Creed, I judge him to be one of the finest directors of his generation, and I was tremendously eager to see what he would do with the hundreds of millions of dollars that Disney was willing to give him — since other fine filmmakers, such as Peyton Reed and David Lowery, had done wonderful things with similar amounts, and I’m excited for Ava DuVernay’s upcoming A Wrinkle in Time for the same reason.

It’s no news to anyone who’s seen it — nor to anyone who’s heard from anyone who’s seen it — that just what Coogler did in fact do with it is something fantastic. I surmise that it’s particularly difficult for a director to make a strikingly personal work of art within the ultra-budget blockbuster strictures of a studio (and I have no idea whether having made two smaller works previously would make it any easier or more difficult), but Coogler has managed it, and offered up a terrific entertainment together with it.

Beauties and Beasts

“Moonlight”

Watching Barry Jenkins’s new feature film Moonlight is like being present at the very creation of the film – not just watching the scenes and performances being captured on camera, but witnessing the conception of it inside the director’s mind. He has filmed and presented it with such spontaneity, and with so thorough a transference of deep subjectivity, that, as François Truffaut once wrote of the films of Renoir, I had to watch it in a theatre a second time just to see if it would turn out the same way. Each shot we see is not merely the canny illustration of burning experiences being depicted and fierce emotions being expressed, but is itself the very expression of them, wrenched from the director’s mind, and arising naturally and spontaneously out of the situation of it being filmed and edited.

Take, for example, the scene playing about halfway through the middle of the film’s three chapters, in which the mother of the main character, Chiron, played by the remarkable British actor Naomie Harris, anxiously greets her son when he gets home one afternoon, and asks him for money (the implication is clear that it’s for more drugs, to feed her addiction). Jenkins has made clear in a large number of interviews and press statements that Harris’s character, Paula, as written by him and his co-writer Tarell Alvin McCraney and as filmed by him, is based in large part on his own mother. Her scenes in the film play with an especial and tremulous immediacy, and this particular one stands out for a peculiar visual invention as well – Jenkins, in the moment of filming the actor’s performance, got her to play it looking straight into the lens, and shot it at the higher rate of 48 frames per second. (Almost all video you see is shot at 24 frames a second; the heightened speed is a new industrial technological advance, notably used to shoot Peter Jackson’s recent Hobbit trilogy.) The result has the effect of an unnerving and rare proximity to the figure onscreen, intensifying her essence while simultaneously rendering it more opaque. Indeed, throughout the film, Harris’s performance is perhaps the most intricate (while Janelle Monáe takes the crown for distinctiveness, Trevante Rhodes for tender sensitivity, and Mahershala Ali for grandeur).

The Year in Movies – 2015

“Trainwreck,” The Back Row’s film of 2015

The year 2015 may be remembered in future decades as a hinge between previous years’ suppressed but rising unease throughout society, and the movements of turmoil and upheaval in local spheres as well as on a global scale. The importance of the UN Summit in Paris for our global environment has been stressed, and the crises that broke out in the latter part of the year reminded us of how far our world is from where we’d like it to be. There are reportedly more refugees now than there have ever been since the end of World War II, and the threat of attacks from ISIL, or Daesh, has stoked terror and reckless urgency in any number of the world’s democracies. In America, a handful of presidential candidates (largely but not solely Donald Trump) have succeeded in stirring up the most sickening strains of racism and fascism in numerous enduringly racist pockets of the West; and in South Africa, we face our own turmoil in a clear low point in satisfaction with and confidence in a disappointing government controlled by what was once an ardent liberation organisation – a discontent whose definitive moment of 2015 can probably be identified as the student protests in October and November, shutting down universities and government systems nationwide in an outpouring of frustration with the ruling political factions and a fervent desire for change.

This blog has not turned into my political column – my chief concern here is still the movies and their aesthetic considerations – but it’s important, I feel, to provide some historical context when reflecting on the year as it’s represented in its movies. The cinema, across all its disparate subject matters and radically diverse styles and treatments, is about life itself, and something of the world and the time often finds its way into the very best of art, whether by design or not. Here I give my selection of the best films of this year – noting that there’s a great deal I didn’t see – and hopefully, if you’ve seen them as well, you’ll recognise the intimations of life contained in them.

Of course, another way life finds itself reflected in the good movies of the year – usually far more obvious to viewers – is when directors include details and experiences of their own personal lives in their films. My selection of the best movies of 2015 are all made by directors who bravely and deftly created personal images in their work, often unconsciously finding expression of the deeper and more tender parts of their inner selves. What makes cinema into an awe-inspiring art form, and what makes a film great, is the discovery of inner lives, psychic murmurings, and emotional and intellectual stirrings in physical detail, visualised and captured with both perception and skill. The great movies are the ones that reveal the essence of a creator’s distinctive personality, the ones where style is not an art-conscious gimmick or ideological tactic, but the exterior protraction of an artistic identity.

Round VII

“Creed”

I confess I had never seen a Rocky movie before, nor been convulsing with the desire to before this month, and, for all those who find themselves in similar situations, the antidote to your vast lack of enthusiasm is Ryan Coogler’s Creed. Sylvester Stallone returns as the Italian Philadelphian boxer, now retired, but the fight here belongs to Adonis Johnson, aka Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), the illegitimate son of Rocky Balboa’s longtime rival, Apollo Creed. Coogler also co-wrote the script with Aaron Covington, and this is evidently a very personal project. I've written before that remakes, sequels, and otherwise formulaic stories are not aesthetically marked by that status, and do not signify a lower tier of cinematic quality, as some film pundits seem to continually suggest, and Creed is an exemplary illustration of my assertion.

The action kicks off in Los Angeles in a juvenile detention centre where the young orphan Adonis, an inmate, is in a fight with some other boys (all inmates are black). A woman comes to see the duly confined boy and offers to take him in. She is Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo’s widow, who has come to terms with his infidelity and intends to take care of his son. Adonis lives by his mother’s name, Johnson, and we find him again as an adult, fast-tracked on a shimmering career path in banking, and boxing on a Mexican circuit on weekends. Mary Anne tries to discourage him, reminding him of the immense harm it caused his father (among many other horrible instances, Apollo Creed was killed in the ring), but still supports him in his decision to leave his job and California and pursue boxing in Philadelphia.