Steve McQueen's five
"Small Axe" films have been well worth the watch...
Mangrove (2020)
The late campaigner
Darcus Howe was a household name (in the UK) but I'd never heard about the trial of
"The Mangrove Nine", the true-life topic of the first film in director/writer Steve McQueen's new 'Small Axe' quintology.
'The Mangrove' was a Caribbean restaurant opened in 1968, in Notting Hill, London by
Frank Crichlow, which became a focal point for the black community, a meeting place for political campaigners and office for the famous Notting Hill Carnival. The police targetted 'The Mangrove' with monthly raids, arrests and general harassment, resulting in a street protest against their actions. Nine of the protestors were put on trail and this is the story of their defiant defence case. Crichlow, Howe and British Black Panther members/leaders
Altheia Jones-LeCointe and
Barbara Beese were among them and form a quartet of main characters, two choosing to defend themselves. The cast are terrific, I always look forward to seeing
Shaun Parkes, plus
Malachi Kirby (from the excellent remake of
'Roots') and
Letitia Wright (from
Marvel's 'Black Panther') deliver their arguments with believable passion and fury.
Jack Lowden is great value as
Ian Macdonald QC, taking visible delight at provoking the legal establishment. I love a courtroom drama and the whole 2nd hour of 'Mangrove' is set at the Old Bailey, with all the fierce debating of the best of the genre. The soundtrack is to die for, featuring
Toots & The Maytals,
Bob Marley and
The Specials. 'Mangrove' would make a great double-bill with
'The Trial of the Chicago 7'.
The Mangrove Nine (1973)
A short contemporary documentary by
'Babylon' director
Franco Rosso about the trial of 'The Mangrove Nine'. Altheia Jones-LeCointe and Darcus Howe speech with such passion, eloquence and righteous indignation. The film satirically intercuts the defendants discussing the operation of the court with a stuffy BBC public information film about lawyers that looks like it's from another century. An excellent companion piece to watch after Steve McQueen's recent film 'Mangrove', the actual footage confirming that he got the details just right. It's as on youtube in full and in very good quality but has now vanished.
Lovers Rock (2020)
Steve McQueen's 'Lovers Rock' is about capturing a feeling as much as telling a story of people, a time and a place. It's virtually all set within a West London "blues" house party, on a single night, with the DJs playing 'lovers rock' 7"s for the crowd of (mostly) singles. McQueen shoots with shallow focus close-ups of bodies touching, hands caressing and sweat dripping from the walls. There are amazing sequences like all the ladies singing
'Silly Games' acapella, with just the click of shoes on the wooden floor, it's almost gospel. Or the DJs playing the same record twice (
'Kunta Kinte Dub' by
The Revolutionaries) as the crowd goes wild, jostling around the camera, making you feel like you're in there with them, surfing the wave of euphoric music. I think McQueen was slightly over-cranking the camera by a few fps to give a subtle dreamy slowness to the dancing. Negative vibes occasionally appear which threaten to break the blissful spell and the cold grey world is shown outside the golden warmth of the party oasis. I loved this film.
I spent the whole week afterwards listening to the lovers rock genre. The film will make you want to do the same. Here's the two best tracks from the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCVR5XR04Mo[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6XDIje4vJU[/video]
Red, White and Blue (2020)
After the first two Small Axe films which were their own self-contained, successful movies, this third one does feel like a feature-length episode in a TV anthology (which it is). Not the kind of thing you'd release on it's own into the world. It's notionally a biopic of Met policeman
Leroy Logan (who is a recognisable commentator from TV news debates), a trailblazing black officer but it focuses on a very narrow part of his life, a few months maybe? Deciding to join the force (prompted by witnessing his father's treatment by the legal system after a policeman beats him) and deciding to not let the institutional racism within the 1980s MET defeat him, nothing else. Logan went on to be a founding member of the UK's
'National Black Police Association' and was awarded an MBE for his work in advancing policing. In a proper stand-alone theatrical film you'd need to explore some of those areas to give a larger picture of the man.
"Look how racist the police used to be" is hardly a revelation (sadly) and not enough of a message to sustain a film all on it's own. Having said all that,
John Boyega and
Steve Toussaint give great performances and although this is the weakest of the Small Axe films, it's still pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHZBlM2q5HA[/video]
Alex Wheatle (2020)
The 4th film from director Steve McQueen's 'Small Axe' series is part of the real life story of novelist
Alex Wheatle, focusing on his imprisonment after the 1981 Brixton riot and his discovery of his West Indian heritage upon arrival in Brixton, after growing up in the notorious
Shirley Oaks Children's Home. Wheatle's life reminded me of poet
Lemn Sissay's 2019 autobiography
'My Name Is Why', as he went through some of the same traumas and personal discoveries (so this unfortunately isn't a unique story). McQueen constructs the film in a non-linear way, shifting forward and back between Wheatle beginning to immerse himself in Brixton culture and music after leaving the "care" system, and him talking with a much older Rastafarian cellmate. He acts as a father figure and a young man who befriends him in Brixton also acts as a surrogate brother, helping Alex discover himself. This is only a small part of Wheatle's biography, not touching on his book writing career and 2008 MBE but unlike 'Red, White and Blue', it felt like a complete film on the theme of
"knowledge of self".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssrLdCwVQ88[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjdVmYqRGY[/video]
Education (2020)
I've rarely seen a modern film look as authentically 1970s as 'Education', the final film in Steve McQueen's 'Small Axe' series. It was filmed on 16mm and framed in the old European standard 1.66:1 aspect ratio. It would make a great triple-bill with
Ken Loach's 'Kes' (1969) and
Alan Clarke's 'Scum' (1979). I believe the 'Play for Today' style of Loach and others was what McQueen was after. Like 'Lovers Rock', the characters are fictional but the story is based on reality.
Kenyah Sandy plays Kingsley, a 1970s London school kid who is having difficulty reading and exhibits some bad behaviour, so the council and school categorise him as
"educationally subnormal" and ship him off to a "special school", which is pretty much a dumping ground. The scene where his mum bursts into his room to berate him for something she assumes is his fault (rather than the deliberate negligence of the school system) and he curls up with his back to the camera and cries was hard to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jN3HGdtFEM[/video]
I hope the BBC commission more strands like 'Small Axe' in the future. I'd like to see another British film-maker given this kind of big canvas.