Adapted from James Baldwin's 1974 novel. Loved the line 'Unbow your head, sister.' A poignant look at a black love affair and the families around them and the racial hatred that causes the man to be unjustly imprisoned; it's rather timely, elegantly made and quietly powerful, underlined by a great score from Nicholas Britell - in fact the same key team as Moonlight with James Laxton on camera and Joi McMillon and Nat Sanders editing. Production designer Mark Friedberg is a new addition (Joker, Mildred Pearce, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited).
Great cast as well: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King the mother (won Oscar), Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, Dominique Thorne, Ebony Obsidian, Michael Beach, Aunjanue Ellis (God bothering mother), Finn Wittrock (lawyer), Ed Skrein (cop), Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta's Paper Boi again).
Music and script were both BAFTA and Oscar nominated. Good structure, as film constantly dips back into the past.
Jenkins, Laxton, McMillon and Sanders were all fellow students at Florida State University, where the director's favourite text book was Walter Murch's 'In the Blink of an Eye'. Whilst there he worked for Richard Portman, Robert Altman's sound editor, and places a lot of importance on the soundtrack. Was looking forward to the epic ten hour The Underground Railroad, with the same team, only to have it reviewed as 'more torture slave porn' and 'like a ten hour version of 12 Years A Slave'... no, thanks.
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