The Hate U Give (2018)

Don't judge the movie by its trailer. The trailer looks like a cheesy teen movie. It is so much better than that. The narration at times sounds a little forced, I'll admit that, with the cheesy street slang needed to be spelled out for the white folks in the audience.

So let me frame the movie for you the way it ought to be presented in a more just world. This is the story of Starr, an African American teenager of immense courage. The movie opens with a scene that is universal for black families in the US, the talk. Immediately the audience is thrust into a world in which young children must learn to remain composed in the face of the state. We are shown the incredible restraint this young woman must display everyday to those who know her best as she straddles two identities between two neighborhoods worlds apart. We see Starr display bravery as she enters hostile territory everyday at the fancy white private school she attends. At the height of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail called out those white moderates frustrating the cause of civil rights, and today those white moderates continue to feign utter blindness. And of course there's Starr's awful white friend Haley who doesn't help either.

The story is driven by a terrible, all-too-common case of police brutality. But it gets much deeper than that. It is about a black community terrorized by THUG LIFE, as so astutely put forth by 2pac decades ago. There is a secondary conflict between the drug lords that run Starr's neighborhood and her family that sort of dilutes that primary message about the death of Khalil. The fact that Khalil dealt drugs is irrelevant to his murder. Starr could have plausibly said presented her witness statement while making no comment on whether he dealt drugs, as she didn't even know firsthand. It is only when you take it in the wider context of a people systemically oppressed does its inclusion in the story make sense. It is perhaps this that makes the movie so much better than I had expected.

It is a very emotional movie, particularly a scene in which the children stand out in the yard and recite the Black Panther Ten Point Program. The ending is also really well done. Amandla Stenberg as Starr gives a starr-turning performance. Her father also has some very memorable lines, including showing the audience his tattoo of his reasons to live and die. The lists are the same. I think it gets at the source of emotion in the movie. It is not death, but life, survival, that evokes emotion.

Detroit (2017)

Kathryn Bigelow's last couplef ilms have been about war, the war over there. This film is only slightly different; it's about the war right here, at home in the USA, whether in 1967 or today. "It looks like 'Nam," he says of Detroit, he being a young white police officer who has never been to Vietnam. For him, the Detroit riot is like war (he who abuses and disbelieves a black Vietnam veteran--and it is not lost that the original incident that sets off the riot is a welcome back party for black veterans). But for the African Americans who call this country home, every day is a war, a losing battle, every encounter with the police can result in an illogical death, and in a brazen disregard for civil rights. They are second class citizens, gunned down in the street without reason. It is infuriating listening to the excuses of the white police officers. And what really bothered me was of course, the complicity, of John Boyega's character thinking he's doing the right thing and of the State Police and the National Guard, etc. They choose to save themselves and turn away. A riot is no excuse for ignoring civil rights. The message from Bigelow is clear, that these problems persist in our society today. This movie is a visceral experience, necessary in our current political climate.

I did the film was too long. I understand the point. That the entire system is designed to disadvantage African Americans, from the very beginnings (the interesting animated opening scene) through to the riot, the policing, and the trial. I don't think the trial was really necessary though. The drama was in the Algiers Motel. The trial was just beating us over the head with it. It could have been done more subtly in text. The movie could've ended there, in my opinion.