➤ MANGROVE, from p.25
HEALTH & FITNESS
characters. But put together, they tell a collective
history of Black Britain. When it played as
the opening night fi lm of this year’s New York
Film Festival, the warmth and celebratory joy
of “Lovers Rock” were astonishing. Those have
never before been qualities I associated with his
work. McQueen’s worst fi lm, “Shame,” is a deliberately
cold and clinical view of a sex addict’s
life, with bottoming out represented by turning
to gay sex. Even better fi lms like “Hunger” and
“12 Years a Slave” feature extended scenes of
men suffering, implicitly espousing a Christian
worldview of spiritual progress through physical
pain.
While Amazon Studios (the co-producer and
American distributor of “Small Axe”) did not
grant access to all of the series’ fi lms, “Mangrove”
and “Red, White and Blue” tell parallel
stories that add up, if seen together, to a patchwork
quilt of Black Brits navigating their country’s
legal system. The fact that both tell unfi nished
stories is crucial to their impact.
McQueen has used the TV format to make
fi lms of any length he chooses: “Lovers Rock” is
barely feature-length, while “Mangrove” runs
more than two hours. But the latter devotes
half of its time to a trial sequence, only to inform
the audience that Crichlow would go on
trial three times for trumped-up charges. While
he got acquitted each time, there’s no sense of
triumph or even closure here. “Mangrove” acknowledges
that even a fairly long feature can’t
do justice to Crichlow’s life or the restaurant’s
place in its community.
When I saw “Red, White and Blue,” I thought
that it ended too quickly and abruptly. Profi
ling real-life policeman Leroy Logan (John
Boyega) as he faces racism from his colleagues
and disapproval from his family and the Black
community for joining their oppressors, it ends
20 years before he decided to quit the force. The
reasons why he stayed remain mysterious. But
taken as a whole, there’s no real central character
in “Small Axe.” “Lovers Rock,” which has
minimal interest in narrative, comes closest to
explicitly acknowledging this.
The running time of “Mangrove” could stand
to be shorter, and it’s hard to make endless trial
scenes, incorporating speeches and grand gestures,
feel fresh. But in place of the neat Hollywood
ending and star turns of Aaron Sorkin’s
“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” set around the
same time as “Mangrove,” McQueen’s version of
courtroom drama feels genuinely chaotic and
nerve-wracking. Like the rest of “Small Axe,”
“Mangrove” reminds us that its story of Britain
is still unfi nished — both in a literal sense, because
a second season set later in time may be
on the way, and because the promises of justice
and freedom made by the UK to Black immigrants
have yet to be fulfi lled.
MANGROVE | Directed by Steve McQueen |
Amazon Studios | Starts streaming Nov. 20
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