Widows (2018)

A Woman Has To Be Better Than a Man
or
"What I've Learned from Men Like My Father and Harry is 'You Reap What You Sow.'"
"I Sure Hope So."

In a pre-film message to theater-goers before his film of Widows, director-co-screenwriter Steve McQueen talks about wanting to make a film of Widows since he was a kid. This might be hype on McQueen's part, but it is possible because it was originally a British TV series created by the amazing Lynda LaPlante (author of "Prime Suspect") in 1983. It spawned sequels, TV remakes, and quite the following—McQueen being one of them, who, after winning Best picture and Best Director Oscars for 12 Years a Slave, set about making his own re-do, combining the best elements of LaPlante's series, and hiring best-selling author Gillian Flynn (she wrote Gone Girl, Dark Places and Sharp Objects)—very adept at writing startling dialogue that "goes there"—and taking it out of its underworld setting and replacing it with a place where a similar forum for betrayal and criminal behavior are at their apex—the world of politics in America (specifically Chicago) circa 2018.

Does this McQueen guy have a knack for timing or what?

We start out with a sequence that traverses time and circumstance: the members of the gang led by Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) are seen interacting with their wives on a day of another "big job" while with every jump-cut, we see it start to go disastrously wrong. Harry canoodles with his wife Veronica (Viola Davis) as they blissfully greet the day. The Perelli's, Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Carlos (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) have an argument over the financing of the shop they own together. The Gunner's, Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) and Florek (Jon Bernthal) are having breakfast together and he couldn't be sweeter, while making note of the black eye he'd given her the night before. Amanda (Carrie Coon) and Jimmy Nunn (Coburn Goss) kiss each other at the door before he leaves for his job. This is all significant.

That job goes horribly awry. As the criminals carry heavy bags of cash and throw them into the back of their van, they barely have enough time to escape before the police come. A violent chase ensues with the CPD blowing the back open of the van, leaving the criminals vulnerable to gun-fire. They manage to make it to their safe-house, but are wounded and Harry takes the wheel of the van to make their final run. But, when the garage doors opens, a SWAT team is waiting for them and riddle the vehicle with bullets until it finally explodes.

The entire team is wiped out.

Veronica wakes up, startled and alone. 

Jamahl Manning (Bryan Tyree Henry) is a Chicago crime kingpin with ambition—he's running for alderman of Chicago's south side, and he's visited by his opponent Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), who's come over to "keep the lines of communication open." They spar over each others' short-comings—Jamahl is a gangster and can't win; Jack Mulligan is running for the alderman job that his father (Robert Duvall) has had for many years. "Nepotism isn't illegal," Mulligan argues from both sides. The thing is, Mulligan feels the threat—not that Manning has actually threatened him—that he might not win the election that's been a Mulligan legacy. After all, both are well-known among the electorate voting for alderman—"even if they don't know what an alderman does."*

It turns out the money from the failed heist was Manning funds earmarked for Jamahl's campaign—two million dollars worth, destroyed during the final fire-fight. At Harry's funeral, Jamahl and his enforcer brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya in another intense extraordinary performance**) observe the proceedings, including the younger Mulligan's condolences to the widow (what's he doing there?)

This gives Jamahl enough information to follow Veronica to her upscale condo to threaten her (and her dog—who plays a significant role) if she doesn't come up with the two million dollars lost and come up with it before the campaign is up. Where is she going to come up with two million dollars?

The secret lies with a notebook that Harry has secreted away and that Veronica acquires with the help of Harry's driver, Bash (Garret Dillahunt). In the notebook, she finds the plans for Harry's next job—a multi-million dollar heist that will solve her problems by paying back the Mannings—if she can pull it off.

But, for that, she'll need a "crew."

Who better than the wives left behind after the disastrous Manning heist? She contacts all of them and at an initial meeting in a steam-bath, only Linda and Alice show up while Veronica makes her proposal and tells them to think about it. After some soul-searching, Alice, who has desperately gone into being an escort with one particular client (Lukas Haas) and Linda decide that, if they want better lives, this is their chance, and the women begin the painstaking research and preparation to pull off the job that will save their lives.

McQueen and co-scenarist Flynn take an improbable situation and play it with a straight-faced earnestness, raising the stakes to truly scary levels of desperation that make you believe that these wives will gear up, arm themselves to the teeth and take it to "The Man" in order to right the wrongs done to them, in a world that is corrupt to the bone and dominated by males. That so much of the background is political, rather than gangland, just gives a more reliably male face to their oppressors and distances them from becoming just distaff versions of the same amorality.

They also stress the betrayal of trust among all parties. The widows have had their lives shattered by behind-the-scenes machinations that they aren't even aware of (or would believe, frankly) and it's a neat little contrivance that allows them to get their revenge and their salvations from the very same source. That it also dissolves any illusions or romanticism they might have previously had just makes their actions more empowering.

As in all the McQueen movies I've seen, the acting is always top-notch with a bit of a toss-up between Davis and Debicki of who runs away with the picture—your perception will most likely change with whoever is on-screen at the time—one can also say the same of Cynthia Erivo, who becomes the necessary fourth wheel to pull off the job. The males do a good job—to a man—of playing variations of blinkerdly self-absorption that demands to be upended.

And for those who might not "buy" the idea of a gangland criminal finding a career in politics, one can look to believable example in both fiction—in "The Godfather" story, it often stated that it was always assumed that Michael Corleone would become "Senator Corleone" or "Governor Corleone"—or reality—one can think of all sorts of real-life examples, past and present-day, of criminals as politicians, but let's be kind and not contemporary, and point to the thirty seven year career of William Bulger in the Massachusetts legislature, despite being the brother of gangster "Whitey" Bulger. A hard insider's look at both organized crime and political organizations can see parallels between corruption and power as being a heady, almost inevitable, mixture.

It's a lit match made in Hell. 

* Aldermen have several responsibilities. Depending on the municipality, aldermen meet with fellow council members monthly, twice a month or even weekly. They might also serve in emergency situations to work through issues pertaining to the area that they represent.

** There's an early scene where Jatemme confronts the two guys who were supposed to be protecting the money, but failed. Turns out they were distracting themselves by doing a rap—they're just kids. Jatemme acts as if he's interested. "Show me." Then, he takes a couple minutes watching them perform...then getting right into their faces...then gunning them down without so much as a change in expression. It's a creepy, manipulative and completely sociopathic move that jars you and Kaluuya milks it for all its worth while seemingly doing very little.

12 Years a Slave

Amazing...and in No Good Way
or
"My Sentimentality Runs the Length of a Coin"

(written at the time of the film's release)

I've been avoiding seeing 12 Years a Slave, despite a deep interest in it. It's one of those films that, despite the buzz, nobody goes too far into specifics, and only talking in general terms of the experience. I like the kinds of films that are special enough that the critic community (such as it is) comes together to not spoil it for anybody else, and dilute the experience.

Also, I hadn't seen Steve McQueen's other films (Hunger and Shame), but knew he was considered an interesting, if brutal, voice (and eye), a bold film-maker, but with no editorial bent, except in the canniest scrupulousness. He's not an artist who intends to tell you how to feel, but instead just wants you to feel it—by any means necessary, within the film-making form.

I also wanted to see it, as "The Movies" have had a very poor record of showing slavery as a subject, often treating it as a benign necessity in its past, informing the fabric of our entertainment and our lives, or social-memory, as such. Part of a film's potential audience has always been housed in The South, and as that section has lagged in its views towards minorities, Hollywood, unless there was a dime in it, would choose not to risk offending its patrons, and so, would, instead, pander, even to the bigot. Think on this: when only two mainstream movies—Amistad and (ugh!) Django Unchained have taken slavery head on, that is a shameful record. Even Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles might be considered more courageous than the whole gamut of Hollywood films.

The whole story of this film is one that makes you shake your head and say "why has no one thought of this?"* "12 years a Slave" had been one of the best-selling books of its day—that being 1853—and became known, along with "Uncle Tom's Cabin," due to its inflaming the abolitionist movement of "starting the Civil War."  After 1865, it fell into obscurity until scholars in Louisiana began doing research on it in the 1960's and published an annotated version in 1968.  

My reaction to it is pretty much what I expected—I was devastated.

I would have been disappointed by anything less.

McQueen starts 12 Years... in an odd place in the story-line—about half-way through, at a time when the free man Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiafor, one of my favorites), now known as the slave Pratt, is working Louisiana cane-fields for a Judge for a season, while his owner Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) is having a contagion of cotton weevil destroy his crop. McQueen introduces us to the environment by moving his camera forward into the work area through the foliage—long, thin leaves that seem to last forever and never move out of the camera's way. Then, at night, sleeping on a bare floor, the woman next to him guides his hand to her, and when finished, turns away. Northup does the same, and when he does, all but leaves the frame.

At that point, Northup, when observing his paltry dinner pan and the berry juice that runs on it, decides to whittle a stick, use the juice as ink and tries to write a letter to anyone in the North who might help with his situation. The process is frustrating, and it is then and only then, that McQueen goes back to the beginning of the story, of how Northup, born free and a violinist by trade in Washington D.C., is tricked into his situation, sold into slavery in Louisiana, his family away to not notice his kidnapping, and his series of houses to which he is sold.

Interesting structure on McQueen's part. Northup endures all kinds of hardships, both physical and mental, his only thought to get back to his family, but it is only at the time when he feels he might betray his family, does he take real action to get out. Oh, he tries to run away a couple times, but if he gets caught, he is very aware that he will be hung, no questions asked, and at one point, he very nearly is, in an excruciating sequence that seems to last forever. Northup hangs, at the instigation of a man he's beaten (Paul Dano) in a rage, and is saved from being killed, but just barely—the noose tight around his neck, his feet tentatively on soft, unsure ground, his toes barely giving him purchase—while around him, life goes on, the other slaves work, taking no action lest they be punished, and he hangs, his life literally in the balance.

It's an incredible sequence, done in long uninterrupted takes, like many of the episodes of cruelty and torture dramatized in the film, that illustrate, very vividly, the absence of any hope in the life of a slave, of the system of property that was imposed on living, thinking human beings, and the thin thread that constituted the difference between survival and the grave. It's a world devoid of charity, of any stripe, and belies any claims to the label of civilization. This is done so well that even a long shot of Northup just looking out around him, that comes deep in the film, with only the sounds of the birds, winds and insects in the background still imposes a feeling of dread, the expectation that the normal will explode in the next second and end you.

It's amazing work, done in ways both screaming and subtle, but makes those moments of quiet anything but peaceful. There's a lot of 12 Years a Slave seared into my head. It will surely win a lot of awards, but hopefully won't be forgotten once the gold is exchanged.

A shot of about a minute of Ejiafor's Northup in contemplation may seem a respite
but is a cautionary one as the natural sounds might be predatory.

* And they have.  "12 Years a Slave" was known enough from the renewed interest in the '60's that in 1996, PBS aired a film by Gordon Parks entitled "Solomon Northup's Odyssey" starring Avery Brooks, deep in his "Deep Space Nine" run.

12 Years a Slave

The Oscars are coming up Sunday, so for the next few days, we'll be taking a look at the 9 nominees for Best Picture.

Amazing...and in No Good Way
or
"My Sentimentality Runs the Length of a Coin"

I've been avoiding seeing 12 Years a Slave, despite a deep interest in it. It's one of those film that, despite the buzz, nobody goes too far into specifics, and only talking in general terms of the experience. I like the kinds of films that are special enough that the critic community (such as it is) comes together to not spoil it for anybody else, dilute the experience.  

Also, I hadn't seen Steve McQueen's other films (Hunger and Shame), but knew he was considered an interesting, if brutal, voice (and eye), a bold film-maker, but with no editorial bent, except in the canniest scrupulousness. He's not an artist who intends to tell you how to feel, but instead just wants you to feel it—by any means necessary, within the film-making form.

I also wanted to see it, as "The Movies" have had a very poor record of showing slavery as a subject, often treating it as a benign necessity in its past, informing the fabric of our entertainment and our lives, or social-memory, as such. Part of a film's potential audience has always been housed in The South, and as that section has lagged in its views towards minorities, Hollywood, unless there was a dime in it, would choose not to risk offending its patrons, and so, would, instead, pander, even to the bigot. Think on this: when only two mainstream movies—Amistad and (ugh!) Django Unchained have taken slavery head on, that is a shameful record. Even Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles might be considered more courageous than the whole gamut of Hollywood films.

The whole story of this film is one that makes you shake your head and say "why has no one thought of this?"* "12 years a Slave" had been one of the best-selling books of its day—that being 1853—and became known, along with "Uncle Tom's Cabin," due to its inflaming the abolitionist movement of "starting the Civil War."  After 1865, it fell into obscurity until scholars in Louisiana began doing research on it in the 1960's and published an annotated version in 1968.  

My reaction to it is pretty much what I expected—I was devastated.

I would have been disappointed by anything less.

McQueen starts 12 Years... in an odd place in the story-line—about half-way through, at a time when the free man Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor, one of my favorites), now known as the slave Pratt, is working Louisiana cane-fields for a Judge for a season, while his owner Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) is having a contagion of cotton weevil destroy his crop. McQueen introduces us to the environment by moving his camera forward into the work area through the foliage—long, thin leaves that seem to last forever and never move out of the camera's way. Then, at night, sleeping on a bare floor, the woman next to him guides his hand to her, and when finished, turns away. Northup does the same, and when he does, all but leaves the frame.

At that point, Northup, when observing his paltry dinner pan and the berry juice that runs on it, decides to whittle a stick, use the juice as ink and tries to write a letter to anyone in the North who might help with his situation. The process is frustrating, and it is then and only then, that McQueen goes back to the beginning of the story, of how Northup, born free and a violinist by trade in Washington D.C., is tricked into his situation, sold into slavery in Louisiana, his family away to not notice his kidnapping, and his series of houses to which he is sold.

Interesting structure on McQueen's part. Northup endures all kinds of hardships, both physical and mental, his only thought to get back to his family, but it is only at the time when he feels he might betray his family, does he take real action to get out. Oh, he tries to run away a couple times, but if he gets caught, he is very aware that he will be hung, no questions asked, and at one point, he very nearly is, in an excruciating sequence that seems to last forever. Northup hangs, at the instigation of a man he's beaten (Paul Dano) in a rage, and is saved from being killed, but just barely—the noose tight around his neck, his feet tentatively on soft, unsure ground, his toes barely giving him purchase—while around him, life goes on, the other slaves work, taking no action lest they be punished, and he hangs, his life literally in the balance.

It's an incredible sequence, done in long uninterrupted takes, like many of the episodes of cruelty and torture dramatized in the film, that illustrate, very vividly, the absence of any hope in the life of a slave, of the system of property that was imposed on living, thinking human beings, and the thin thread that constituted the difference between survival and the grave. It's a world devoid of charity, of any stripe, and belies any claims to the label of civilization. This is done so well that even a long shot of Northup just looking out around him, that comes deep in the film, with only the sounds of the birds, winds and insects in the background still imposes a feeling of dread, the expectation that the normal will explode in the next second and end you.

It's amazing work, done in ways both screaming and subtle, but makes those moments of quiet anything but peaceful.  There's a lot of 12 Years a Slave seared into my head. It will surely win a lot of awards, but hopefully won't be forgotten once the gold is exchanged.

A shot of about a minute of Ejiafor's Northup in contemplation may seem a respite
but is a cautionary one as the natural sounds might be predatory.

* And they have.  "12 Years a Slave" was known enough from the renewed interest in the '60's that in 1996, PBS aired a film by Gordon Parks entitled "Solomon Northup's Odyssey" starring Avery Brooks, deep in his "Deep Space Nine" run.