ATTICA

Featuring: Clarence B. Jones, Lawrence Akil Killebrew, Alhajji Sharif, Al Victory, George Che Nieves, David Brosig and John Johnson.
Writer: Stanley Nelson
Directors: Traci Curry and Stanley Nelson

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

In upstate New York in 1971, the entire population of Attica Prison took control of the facility and held prison employees hostage, to protest the cruel, inhumane treatment they were receiving at the hands of a brutal penal system. The vast majority of prisoners were black or brown; all the correctional officers and administration were white. After five days of non-violent negotiation, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, with President Nixon’s blessing, ordered armed police battalions and sniper units to take back Attica Prison; of the 43 men who died, 33 were inmates, while 10 were correctional officers and prison employees.

In director Stanley Nelson’s retrospective analysis of the event, it becomes very clear race and politics were the underlying concerns of those in charge of solving the Attica Prison stand-off. 50 years of memories and muted facts are revisited in interviews with prisoners who survived the killings; the personalities of the incarcerated but educated men who tried to attain basic human rights for the prison population, only to be slain where the stood, are remembered. And the finger of blame for the murder of 43 men is pointed squarely at those in power, who unleashed a tired, angry, well-armed mob upon a courtyard of defenseless men.

The stories and images are shocking and violent. Nelson and co-director Traci Curry refuse to skimp on detail, be it in the lead-up to the prison uprising, the chronology of events over the five day shut-in, or the horrendous slaughter that brought the revolution to an end. Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary Feature, Attica further exposes the insidious racial underpinnings of American society and the true worth that politicians, then and now, place on the value of black and brown lives.

THE 93RD ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS

Did a global pandemic just provide the shot in the arm that the Oscar broadcast needed?

There were some familiar elements about the annual awards ceremony, the kind that a location shift and a downsized production couldn’t rework. But the harder one tried to pinpoint what was the ‘same’ about Oscars 2021, the easier it became to find a point-of-difference between this year and...well, every other Oscar-cast before it.

Broadcast network partner ABC and producers Steven Soderbergh, Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins were charged with capturing the traditions of Academy Awards night but also dragging it through and beyond a media landscape fractured like never before and a society in recovery mode. Their Oscars had to encapsulate a celebration of not just cinema, but of the politics of inclusion and how acceptance and diversity played a role in many of the 2020 nominees. 

Unfolding within the cavernous art deco-inspired Union Station in Los Angeles, bedecked in robes and garnished with floral arrangements that seemed mostly tasteful, the ceremony opened at pace with Regina King gasping for air after walking the red carpet right to her mark on stage (including the ubiquitous ‘gown trip’). Setting the tone for a show that repeatedly acknowledged a country in flux, King opened with an acknowledgement of the George Floyd verdict ("If things had gone differently this past week...I may have traded in my heels for marching boots.")

That is some stark, heartfelt commentary, and more was to follow. Thomas Vinterberg’s win for Best International Feature (pictured, left) afforded a platform for the Danish filmmaker to reflect (in intimate detail) upon the grief of losing his daughter in a car accident at the start of production on Another Round. Best Supporting Actor winner Daniel Kaluuya (for Judas and The Black Messiah) called on society to follow in the spirit of his social activist character, Fred Hampton. He undercut his message somewhat by thanking his parents for having sex (cut to - his mum, mouthing, “What’s he talking about?”), but the point was made.

Such declarations and those that followed weren’t bleated out to a Kodak Theatre-sized audience, imbued with an inflated sense of dutiful righteousness that often accompanies speeches screamed to the back of a theatre. Instead, winners - like Best Score honouree Jon Batiste, who accepted with co-composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for Soul, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Make-Up and Hairstyling team Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal, Jamika Wilson - were able to accept with dignified, considered addresses that conveyed heartfelt sentiment.

The biggest shocks of the evening came in a hurried final 15 minutes. West Side Story supporting actress winner Rita Moreno presented the Best Picture winner, not unexpectedly, to Nomadland (Chloe Zhao had already earned the Best Director gong, the first woman of colour to do so), with Best Actor and Actress categories still to air. While audiences were still debating the value in such a move, Frances McDormand took Best Actress honours in typically Frances McDormand style, quoting Macduff from Shakespeare's Macbeth (“I have no words: my voice is in my sword. We know the sword is our work, and I like work”) 

This was followed by a wave of subdued shock and palpable disappointment when the Best Actor Oscar went to an absent Sir Anthony Hopkins for The Father and NOT sentimental favourite, the late Chadwick Boseman, for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Musical director Questlove wrapped things up pretty quickly in the wake of Hopkin’s win.

It was clear the format shuffle happened based upon the expectation Boseman would win and his widow, who has made some deeply emotional speeches in her husband’s absence at recent award ceremonies, would end the show on a rapturous remembrance of the actor. It was a roll of the dice the producers gambled and lost on, but it spoke to their willingness to rework and ultimately refresh the format based upon demands beyond their control. 

Notable omissions from the regular format included the host gig, which is totally understandable (not even Billy Crystal, reflecting upon the year that saw 550,000 pandemic fatalities in the U.S., could have pulled off an opening salvo of COVID-related gags); live musical performances (not missed, frankly); and, that bit where the accountants bring a briefcase out for everyone to see.

The 93rd Academy Awards were determined to take a message to an America for whom filmgoing had served no purpose over the past year. It was the role of the producers to define a new relevance for the Oscars, at a time when the movies played little relevance at all. In that regard, the understated ceremony (and that’s not a word I ever thought I’d use to describe the Oscars) proved surprisingly effective, even affecting. Taking a small-scale approach to big-screen entertainment, we were reminded of the value of the art form and those that bring it to us.

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO

Featuring: James Baldwin. Narrated by Samuel L Jackson.
Writer: James Baldwin.
Director: Raoul Peck

Rating: 4.5/5

“The story of the Negro in America is the story of America.” – James Baldwin.

The last great incomplete literary vision by American author James Baldwin is realised with precision and profound integrity in Raoul Peck’s elegant, pulse-quickening documentary, I Am Not Your Negro. The Haitian director’s dissection of a nation defined by dysfunctional race relations provides the complexity, emotion and analytical respect that Baldwin's astute work has long deserved; this extraordinarily moving and artfully rendered film is the nominee to beat in this year's Best Documentary Oscar showdown.

Born in 1924 Harlem to a single mother, Baldwin decamped from his Greenwich Village base, after years experiencing the commonplace prejudice of American life for people of colour, to settle in Paris in 1948. In an interview with The New York Times, he observed, “Once I found myself on the other side of the ocean, I (saw) where I came from very clearly. I am the grandson of a slave, and I am a writer. I must deal with both.” This realisation led to landmark works such as Notes of a Native Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name (1961), the bestseller The Fire Next Time (1963), the 1964 play Blues for Mister Charlie, based upon the racially-based slaying of teenager Emmet Till, and the book Nothing Personal (1964, co-authored with Richard Avalon), an account of the murder of civil rights advocate Medgar Evers.

A lauded documentarian (The Man on The Shores, 1993; Lumumba, 2000; Sometimes in April, 2005), Peck came into possession of 30 pages of the author’s notes and observations from the mid 1970s, that was to have been the basis for Remember This House, a defining account of the role played by three of Baldwin’s friends and contemporaries – Evers, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. The work remained unrealised by Baldwin, who passed away in 1987, but the material has inspired the filmmaker to construct both an understated polemic on the shameful history of American bigotry and a biography of an intellectual whose insight and passion into his nation’s dark soul is unparalleled.

Utilising archival images and interview footage of the author and the three social-change giants, as well as historic misrepresentations of the black man in white American culture, I Am Not Your Negro offers an arcing, aching narrative that spans the centuries of abuse and oppression suffered by the African American population. In measured tones not usually associated with the actor, Samuel L Jackson assumes Baldwin’s vocal cadence and recites key passages from the author’s decades-old work that, as with much of Peck’s film, offer a clarity of voice that speaks directly to the America of today.

Despite being central to a resurgent social activism filmmaking sector, I Am Not Your Negro has key points of difference to its co-nominees. It does not wear its anger and injustice on its sleeve, like Ava Duvernay’s volatile and equally vital 13^th, or cast a sprawling socio-political net in the study of a fractured United States, like Ezra Edelman’s similarly masterful O.J.: Made in America. Where Raoul Peck’s take on systemic hatred and intolerance finds its own soaring cry is in its portrait of a nation that had the opportunity to right wrongs, was being led by great minds and spiritual warriors towards a better future, but which dug in its jackbooted heels.

In light of #BlackLivesMatter and the uprising in Ferguson, the impassioned thoughtfulness and unshakeable humanism of James Baldwin’s words and voice are as relevant now as any point in history. I Am Not Your Negro portrays the dignified fury with which Baldwin confronted his oppressors, past and present; it is the perfect cinematic companion piece to the man’s legacy.

TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (Deux jours, une nuit)

Stars: Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione and Catherine Salee.
Writers/Directors: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne.

Rating: 4.5/5

Deceptively minimalist in its realism as only the cherished Dardennes Brothers can be, Two Days, One Night is, in fact, a soaring study in the fragility and fierceness of the human spirit.

As Sandra, the struggling young mum whose home and livelihood is threatened by heartless corporate cost cutting, Marion Cotillard further strengthens her status as arguably the finest actress working in film today; the Oscar and Cesar overseers agree, nominating her for Lead Actress at this year's ceremonies. Soliciting the pity of all her workmates, several of whom have already voted to have her sacked in favour of a Euro1000 bonus, Cotillard conveys a wave of desperate emotions that have her (and the audience) on the brink of tears from the first frame.

The Dardennes have always brought tremendous insight into the plight of their heroines. From their 1999 breakout hit, Rosetta, to 2011’s festival favourite, The Kid with a Bike, the Belgian brothers have constructed determined and damaged leading lady roles that (they produced Cotillard’s triumphant tearjerker, Rust and Bone, in 2012). They are also filmmakers who stridently refuse to indulge in sentimentality, a narrative avenue that presents itself as an option at several key moments in their latest work but which remains at a directorial arm’s length.

Capturing easily identifiable authenticity in its smallest moments (a shattering stillness at the family dinner table; Sandra’s nonchalant downing of anti-depressants), Two Days, One Night may be the film that most sublimely melds the barebones emotional reality in which their protagonists eek out survival with themes that are both deeply personal yet define our societal existence. It presents the consummate movie actress of her generation stripping bare the vanities of her profession to portray an everywoman hero, gently coaxed to life by filmmakers with a profound grasp of true emotion.