BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER**

WAKANDA FOREVER is a film that is hobbled by its earnestly expressed grief for actor Chadwick Boseman, the T'Challa of its predecessor.  This memorialising is welcome in the early part of the film, and beautifully handled both in the Marvel opening credits and in the way iwriter-director Ryan Coogler incorporates the death of the character into its opening act.  But as we move into the film's second half, and another character dies, we realise that this movie is leaning into grief to a level that slows the pace, brings down the mood, and creates a rather mawkish and morbid end-product.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the character of Shuri, T'Challa's younger sister and science nerd.  As written by Coogler and played by Letitia Wright, Shuri spends the entire film crying and quiet. Even the final scene is of her burning mourning clothes. I feel we could have gotten to her decision to move forward and adopt the mantle of Black Panther half way through the excessively long run-time.

The claustrophobically negative atmosphere spreads to the B-plot which sees Tenoch Huerta introduced as the character Namur. He leads an underwater kingdom of mer-people who also have access to Vibranium.  Namur is pissed off that T'Challa took the decision to tell the world about its wonders and so put his own kingdom at risk of colonial exploitation from the Americans.  

I really liked Huerta's performance and the design of this kingdom but the whole plot seemed weak as fuck.  He wants to ally with Wakanda against the imperials, but tells them if they don't ally with him he'll launch war on them.  Charming! So you end up with a massive battle between the two Vibranium super-powers with the real-world power of America left on the sidelines along with all of the American characters - Martin Freeman's CIA agent, his ex-wife - a wasted Julia Louis-Dreyfus who is now his boss, and Dominique Thorne as the MIT student who invented the vibranium detector.  The fact that the latter is squeezed out of screen-time is particularly sad, as it means the movie doesn't really explore the issue of the African-American versus African experience.

I also wonder how actual Africans feel about a film where lots of African-Americans are putting on a variety of accents and an African-American writer-director is creating a version of wise oracular Africa guided by its ancestors.  Not to mention the LGB community who must be looking at the almost embarrassed way the movie hints at a lesbian relationship between Danai Gurira's general and her sidekick played by Michaela Coel.  Somehow being so embarrassed about showing a proper kiss is even worse than not having any representation at all. 

WAKANDA FOREVER has a running time of 161 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is on global release.

MANGROVE - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Opening Night Gala

A rather different Opening Night experience at the London Film Festival this year. Rather than tripping up the red carpet to the Odeon Leicester Square in all our finery, we watched the opening film in our living room via the BFI's festival screening website.   Perhaps this is fitting as this year's opener is Steve McQueen's MANGROVE, part of a five part series of films to be shown on the BBC in November celebrating Black British History.  

The film's title is taken from a small West Indian cafe in Notting Hill in the 1960s that served as a kind of unofficial community hub for the immigrants who had come over as part of the Windrush generation.  It might be hard for kids now to realise that Notting Hill then was a poor part of North Kensington, full of immigrants trying to take their place in British society despite endemic racism.  They were brutalised by an institutionally racist Metropolitan police, and further brutalised and isolated by urban planning. The Mangrove was continually raided and broken up for no good - or at least lawful - reason.  And it's no accident that the Westway was built to carve up the community with a massive impregnable physical obstacle - leaving Notting Hill to be gentrified to the East, and Shepherd's Bush to rot in the West.  Even the constituency was reshaped in 1970 to break-up a potentially powerful voting block.

That year - 1970 - is no accident. It was also the year of the trial of the Mangrove Nine.   Naturally, as someone who received the finest education England has to over, I had no idea this trial had taken place!  And so this film serves as a powerful educational piece beyond its role as mere entertainment.  

The first half of the film shows anger building in the West Indian community at the continual harassment of the police.  Black men are beaten brutally, their mothers are spoken down to - coppers arrest black men on the whim of a card game.  And yet - and yet - there is joy and community and fun to be had at the Mangrove.  The roti is good!  The music is good!  And there might even be some under the table gambling and rum. The cafe owner, Frank Crichlow, certainly doesn't think of himself as a community leader, even though he has become one by default. He's just there to create a safe space for his people. 

The centre of the film is a peaceful protest organised by local activists such as the lawyer Darcus Howe, and the Black Panther Altheia Jones-Lecointe.  As the protestors meet intransigent police, they are beaten and selectively pulled out and arrested. Most absurdly, the nine are charged with Riot and Affray - a new charge so serious they are tried in the Old Bailey.

The second half of the film is thus the trial of the Mangrove Nine. We see them as differently motivated.  Frank's ambivalence is clear.  He even considers taking a plea deal. Others are angry and want to express that anger clearly and violently even at the cost of their own defense.  Howe and Jones-Lecointe are the most educated and articulate and so represent themselves.  They are the most clear-sighted about Frank and the Mangrove's role in the community, and the significance of the trial. They are invested in this as a pivotal moment in the civil rights struggle. 

One of the things that struck me most powerfully was the contrast between the sepia-toned warmth and informality of the Mangrove, where all are welcome, and Aunt Betty is always sitting on a stool with a song on her lips - and the austerity of the Old Bailey.  The topography of the courtroom is extreme - with the viewing gallery absurdly high and removed from the action, the judge once again boxed in and high, the mere lawyers low and supplicant. It's a building and a courtroom designed to impose, to give gravitas to those in power, and make sure those in the dock know their place. 

As a result, its British justice that's on trial - from the ability of Darcus and Altheia to enter the Bailey with the dignity of lawyers - to the ability to select a jury of ones peers - to the ability to leave the dock without being manhandled and confined. What I really liked was that - despite a superbly funny ally in one of the white barristers - this is not a film about white allies. It's Darcus' superb cross-examination of the prosecution's key witness - a Met police officer - that wins their case.  Although a genuinely decent closing direction from the Judge to ignore the colour of a uniform or of a witnesses skin, no doubt helped too.

There are several genuinely moving passages in this film. The first - moving me to tears - was am impassioned speech by Jones-Lecointe about how she is doing this for her unborn child.  But the second was the a long held close-up on Crichlow as he hears the verdict. In a sense, this has been his film and his journey - from businessman to activist. He has come to terms with what the Mangrove means to his community, and the responsibility that comes with that.

Of course, nothing changes really. The harassment continues and black people continue to face prejudice.  But there is some small comfort in the fact this history is finally being brought to our screens by our most talented of film-makers, and in a format where everyone will be able to see it.  But it does make me sad not to have experienced it on the big screen. I can only begin to imagine how powerful McQueen's extreme close-ups must have been in that format.

Special kudos to all involved in recreating 1960s Notting Hill - the street-scapes, clothes, music, cars, processed film that gave it a certain colour-scape and texture - all worked superbly well.  And kudos too, to the cast. Letitia Wright deserves special mention as Jones-Lecointe, as does Malachi Kirby as Howe. But it's Shaun Parkes as Frank who really takes us deep into the heart of this spectacular film.

MANGROVE played the New York and London Film Festivals 2020. It will be shown on TV in November. It has a running time of 126 minutes.

BLACK PANTHER

BLACK PANTHER comes to our screens freighted with the self-appointed weight of political history. It's as if action movies starring Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Wesley Snipes never happened. It's as if nuanced black action heroes like Lando Calrissian never happened.  This, we are told, is a watershed moment where a major franchise blockbuster not only stars a single male action hero, but a whole cast full of amazing black male and female talent.  I can't but agree - there's a qualitative leap when you have an entire film full of black actors, with African accents, with most of the action set in Africa.  This is all to the good, and it's great to see black representation go to that next stage, but I can't help but feel that that tide of goodwill toward the film - goodwill that I too shared - has clouded critical attitudes toward it.  I am hugely excited that such a project has come to our screens, but I think it would be patronising not to review it critically.  I sense in a lot of the excitement in the tweets since its preview screenings began, at best conflation between excitement that the project exists vs its content - and at worst virtue signalling.  Because let's be clear, this is an entirely disposable occasionally very funny, but often rather dull and overly complicated film.  And its titular character, as portrayed by Chadwick Boseman (GET ON UP), is the least interesting thing about it.

The story has so many strands it's hard to know where to begin.  We have a thinly veiled version of Rwanda blessed with a rare metal called Vibranium which gives their king, Black Panther, extra-ordinary power, and the country futuristic technology.  The film takes from this premise the following concern:  

1) Should this tech be hidden to prevent its exploitation by others;

2) Shared with the world for good;

3) Or be used to get revenge and achieve domination over the rest of the world? 

Broadly speaking, Black Panther starts off believing the first, and this story is his coming of age story, a classical Greek tale of a son learning to confront his father's assumptions and become his own man.  His wariness is made credible by the existence of a nasty white South African thief called Ulysses Klaue, who's being chased down by a CIA agent called Everett Ross.   By contrast, and despite seeing all this, Black Panther's little sister Shuri, who is a tech genius, believes the tech should be shared, tradition thrown off, and modernity embraced.  Finally, Black Panther and Shuri have a cousin called Erik Killmonger, who as his name suggest with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, is angry at being rejected by his family, the death of his father, and wants to overthrow Black Panther and use the Vibranium for evil.

Where the film works well is in its opening 45 minutes.  The prologue nicely sets up some of the mythology and origins of the Black Panther/T'Challa, and the emotional ties between father, uncle and son as well as the Panther and his love interest. The action is fast paced, we are introduced to the the man we think is the antagonist, and also the character who truly turns out to be the real threat.  And we get the surprise of two of the least well known members of the cast - Letitia Wright and Dalai Gurira - being by far the most charismatic and funny.  The problem is that after that we get a middle section that is extremely bogged down in all the intricacies of the cumbersome plot. And a final section that is your typical Marvel action set-piece with bad CGI.  Someone in the screening I attended, who evidently loved the film, shouted "Rewind!" as the credits rolled, and I just wanted to shout back "Edit!"  There's a decent 100 minute action movie struggling inside this over-blown 134 minute running time.

The problems for the film are worse than just a baggy script though. Chadwick Boseman is a charisma-less lead. Perhaps the most charisma-less lead since Henry Cavill's Superman.  And he plays the role not just with a South African accent, but with an almost pastiche version of a Nelson Mandela impression.  His entire acting range seems to be to bite his lip, and look concerned. He's acted off the screen by Daniel Kaluuya (GET OUT) as W'Kabi, his fellow Wakandan, not to mention Michael B Jordan (CREED) as his troubled cousin Killmonger.  And that's before we even get to the women. Lupita N'yongo is anonymous as the love interest - an early attempt to rescue Boko Haram kidnapped women makes you think she's gonna be feisty, but no, she really is just there to look adoring and be supportive. And so she in turn is acted off the screen by Letitia Wright's smart, irreverent Shuri, and by the Black Panther's General Okoye (Danai Gurira). And to be honest - and I'm not gonna be popular for saying this, the entire bunch of them are outclassed by Andy Serkis cameo as the evil Klaue, and he seemed to be having far more fun on screen than I did in the cinema. 

The tragedy of this film is that having waited so long for a black-led ensemble action movie the result is so anodyne. Take a Bond-like villain here, a character that's like Q, your typical Marvel action scenes and tech, an indifferent score and special effects.... And then for no reason at all, chuck in a cataphract rhino and a cliche of tribal strife. The result is a film that isn't half as good as BLADE and middling by the standards of the MCU.

BLACK PANTHER has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated 12A for moderate violence, injury detail and a rude gesture. It goes on global release on Wednesday 14th February.