Black Panther: Behind the Scenes

Posted on February 20, 2018 at 8:25 pm

I was lucky enough to be able to interview “Black Panther” co-writer/director Ryan Coogler for rogerebert.com.

The movie places an African and an African-American in opposition. “I’m an African-American male born in the 1980’s in Oakland,” he said, “and there’s a dynamic between being African and African-American that’s very interesting.” This is a key element he explored in the film, with African characters from the fictional country of Wakanda, which has never been colonized or even had any trade relationships with western countries, and African-American characters, who reflect the stress of living in a country still confronting racial divides.

“The question for me is what does it mean to be African? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself since I first knew I was black, since my parents sat me down and said, ‘You’re black and that’s what this means. You’ve got to navigate the world in a certain way.’ That’s the conversation every person has had to have because of the way the world works. If you don’t have that understanding you could be in a situation that costs you your life,” as Coogler’s first film, the fact-based “Fruitvale Station,” showed. “Nobody who was telling me what being African means had ever been there. My parents had never been, my grandmother had never been.” So it was essential for him to spend time in Africa, researching the cultures that Wakanda would represent.

“The African culture the world knows best is the African-American culture,” he said, citing the worldwide dominance of hip-hop. But working on the film and spending time in Africa helped him realize that the African culture he thought was erased by bringing Africans to the United States as slaves was much more intact than he thought. “I grew up thinking the African culture had been taken away from us, that it was lost. But the truth is, we didn’t. We hung onto it.”

And as the mother of a costume designer, I was especially excited to speak to Ruth Carter, whose costumes play such an essential role in the film. She talked about the African inspirations for the traditional tribal attire of the Wakandans, and the way African patterns are even reflected in the iconic superhero suit.

Actual African fabric as we know it is Dutch and Dutch-inspired and brought to Africa. Africa liked it and adopted it so all of their African fabrics come from Holland or from China. Wakanda was never colonized, so I didn’t want to use them. Every time I started to use the African fabrics I felt like it was not this movie so I created my own fabrics, based on the sacred geometry of African art. Usually it’s a checkerboard or it’s pyramid shapes or it’s striations of horizontal and vertical strikings so I use that and we created prints. Lupita’s green dress in the casino is one print that we created based on the Nigerian kente cloth. We just extracted the line work and we printed the fabric the same way we printed T’Challa’s superhero suit.

Once I get the illustration of the super suit I can’t change it; I can’t give him a Shaft coat, all of a sudden. I have to stay within those confines because they have already been working with merchandisers and all kinds of other people. The one thing that I did do which was my contribution was the Okavango pattern, a triangle shape.

That fabric is completely made up. The triangle is definitely a big part of African artistry. It’s a mystery within the African culture what that triangle shape actually means and everybody has their own theory. So the panther suit was printed with that triangle shape all over it so that when you’re looking at it, it’s this superhero suit that has this Wakandan language traveling through it; veining throughout it, and you also see an Okavango pattern and which makes it feel like he’s in the place of Wakanda, he’s in Africa and he’s an African king and gives it texture.

Vanity Fair posted a scene analysis with Coogler explaining what was going on in one of the film’s striking action sequences.

More commentary about this brilliant, groundbreaking new film coming soon.

Mae Abdulbaki on Representation of Middle Eastern People In Movies

Posted on January 29, 2018 at 2:54 pm

My friend and fellow critic Mae Abdulbaki has a very thoughtful piece on The Young Folks about the portrayal of Middle Eastern characters and the appearance of actors of Middle Eastern origin in films. Hollywood has a shameful tradition of “browning” white actors for roles in Biblical and historical epics.

To this day, there is still very little representation of Middle Eastern people who aren’t stereotypical terrorists and, if they ever do appear, they’re background characters or there to help white people (sometimes in their own land, see: “Indiana Jones,” “The Mummy” as examples). So when it was announced that there would be a live-action “Aladdin,” I was beyond ecstatic. Finally, a movie that had once been one of the only positive representations of Middle Eastern people on screen was now getting the live-action treatment. But Disney’s adaptation of the beloved animated classic has already hit several bumps in the road–from rumors of not being able to find a Middle Eastern cast, to “browning up” the extras on set–Disney’s inability to properly understand the importance of representation and the need to self-insert a white character where he doesn’t belong proves that the studio, and Hollywood in general, still struggles.

Hostiles

Posted on January 18, 2018 at 2:41 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence, and language
Profanity:	Some very strong and racist language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Extensive and very graphic violence, many characters injured and killed, rapes
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	January 19, 2018

“Hostiles” is more in conversation with movies about the settlement of the West than it is about or in conversation with the brutal history of the West itself. For decades there were simple stories of brave cowboys and soldiers fighting racist caricatures of Native Americans. White men were heroes and Indians were savages.

Then there were some stories with a little more nuance and some better intentions but pretty much on the side of “civilization” and the more nuanced Native American characters were usually played by actors who were not Native Americans. Westerns went out of vogue in part because of the growing recognition that the stories were too complicated and painful for the “good guys vs. bad guys” cliches of the past. “Hostiles” is a sincere effort from writer/director Scott Cooper at a Western that frankly grapples with the challenge of building a society on the unthinkable carnage and injustice of the past. But there is more formula than drama, with each character specifically designed to represent a place on the spectrum of culpability. With dialogue like “I don’t know what we are going to do with these wretched savages” and “There ain’t enough punishment for his kind” and soldiers with too-symmetrical responses to their own culpability, and unceasing brutality to drive the points home, even the fine acting cannot bring it to life.

Christian Bale plays Captain Joseph Blocker, a man who has witnessed and inflicted horrible brutality in the fight with Indians. When he is ordered to escort an Indian leader and his family to their home, he refuses, until his superior officer threatens to court-martial him and withhold his pension. Blocker despises Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), who has been in prison for years and is dying of cancer. But the President has ordered that he be allowed to return home to die, and he will need an escort to protect him and his family.

Blocker assembles a group of soldiers and they begin the journey. They come across Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), whose husband and children have just been killed by Indians, who stole their horses and burned down her home. She is severely traumatized, but Blocker’s respectful treatment helps her begin to accept what has happened, and when Yellow Hawk’s daughter offers her some clothes, she changes out of her blood-stained dress.

Each encounter along the way, most horrifically brutal, is designed to add some variation on the theme, and all boil down to: both white settlers and Native Americans committed atrocities and both have to find some way to reconcile with the past. The film begins with a quote from DH Lawrence: ““The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” Perhaps more apt is a quote attributed to Golda Meir, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”

Parents should know that this film has extended peril, violence, and rape, with many characters injured and killed, including children and a baby, and many grisly and disturbing images, suicide, racist epithets and comments, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What helped Mrs. Quaid begin to accept her loss? How were Blocker and Wills different? Why did Blocker get on the train?

If you like this, try: “Unforgiven” and “The Searchers”

Coco and Mexican Culture

Posted on November 29, 2017 at 3:57 pm

Slate has a great guide to the cultural references in “Coco” that people who are not of Mexican heritage might miss. (Note that co-director Lee Unkrich has responded to one of the points in the Slate article, saying that the use of both Dia dos Muertos and Dia de los Muertos was intentional to reflect the support for both they found in their research.

And this piece by Manuel Betancort about watching “Coco” with a Spanish language soundtrack made me sorry I don’t speak Spanish. He says that “Coco” is “Pixar’s most culturally specific movie in their lauded pantheon.”

Here at last was the kind of dubbing that didn’t feel like it was mangling, or weirdly bending the original into something it was not. It just had its characters talking (and singing) in the very language they were meant to speak. There’s a difference, for example, in hearing Miguel’s family talk about ofrendas (a word that always feels like it’s being italicized by its voice performers when speaking English, eager as they surely are to make it clear it’s a Spanish expression many may not be familiar with), and quite another to see that word just roll along in dialogue that doesn’t needlessly highlight it.

That’s perhaps even truer when it comes to Hector, the bumbling skeleton that Miguel befriends while in the Land of the Dead, and to Ernesto de la Cruz, the famed musical legend the musically inclined young boy admires and hopes to find while in that fantastical world. The former may be voiced by García Bernal in both versions (he’s one of a handful of actors who made good use of his bilingualism to score a double gig) but the latter, played by Benjamin Bratt, was dubbed by Marco Antonio Solís. And not to diminish Bratt’s singing abilities, but it truly is something else to hear the Pedro Infante-like character be portrayed by one of Mexico’s most recognizable voices.

Marshall

Posted on October 12, 2017 at 5:25 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Allegations of rape and attempted murder, fights and beatings, gun
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	October 13, 2017
Date Released to DVD:	January 8, 2018

“It’s a real life Bigger Thomas,” says a character describing the new case assigned to a young lawyer named Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman). Bigger Thomas was the young black protagonist who could not escape the fundamental racism of American society in Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, accused of rape and murder. In this real-life case, a black chauffeur named Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown of “This is Us”) was accused of rape and attempted murder of his employer, Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson), a wealthy Connecticut socialite. Marshall, then the entire legal staff of the NAACP, was going from town to town representing black defendants, many whom “confessed” after being beaten and starved, but, Marshall insists, only those who are innocent. They do not have time or resources to devote to those who did what they are accused of.

This case is unusual because it is in the North and because it is so high-profile. It has been a front page story in the newspapers and many white families are firing their domestic employees because they are so terrified.

Connecticut may not have the overt, explicit racism of the Jim Crow laws, but in some ways that makes fighting its version of bigotry more difficult. The judge (James Cromwell) refuses Marshall the normally automatic courtesy of allowing him to represent Spell in court without being a member of the state bar association. Instead, a local lawyer named Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) must argue the case, even though he has no experience in criminal trials and is very reluctant to get involved. “That must be difficult,” Marshall tells him wryly. “To have a reputation to think of.” Marshall may sit at the counsel’s table but may not address the judge or examine witnesses. He says that not being allowed to speak is the worst blow he has had as a lawyer, worse than having to enter the courthouse by the back door.

This is an absorbing drama on many levels, working purely as an “Anatomy of a Murder”-style courtroom mystery, as a historical depiction of the roots and mechanics of social change, and as the personal story of the two young lawyers facing enormous professional and personal challenges, developing a friendship, and becoming better at what they do.

The screenplay by father and son Michael and Joseph Koskoff is forthright in addressing the complicated ethics of preparing a defense for an individual client that many not always be consistent with the larger political imperatives. It also delicately if not always sucessfully skirts the complicated problem faced by contemporary films based on real-life events: if the white character teaches the black character, it’s condescending, but if the black character teaches the white character it’s “magical Negro.” In real life, Samuel Friedman was already active in civil rights cases before the Spell case, and he was slender and athletic. But for dramatic purposes, here he is played by Josh Gad and his character only takes insurance cases. We first see him winning for an insurance company on a technicality that leaves the disabled plaintiff without any damage payment. And Marshall’s character changes very little over the course of the film. He is sophisticated, tough, smart, and confident all the way through which is great as a tribute to one of the towering figures of the 20th century, but without some kind of character arc like the one given to Friedman, the risk is that he becomes a supporting character in the movie that has his name in the title. Fortunately Boseman is intensely charismatic and a gifted actor who is able to bring a great deal to the role, and he and Gad have a strong chemistry that benefits and is benefited by director Reginald Hudlin’s gift for understanding when comedy is needed to lessen the tension. Brown is also excellent in a role far removed from the high educated and successful characters on “This is Us” and “People v. O.J.” Indeed, the entire cast is outstanding, especially Hudson, Ahna O’Reilly as a juror, and Barrett Doss as Marshall’s host and friend.

The film balances the personal, the political, and the professional lives of its heroes and is frank about the opportunism — and the opportunity — of their choices. It places it in the context of its time, as Friedman’s family in Eastern Europe is captured by the Nazis and white thugs attack both lawyers. It makes its case as effectively as Friedman and Marshall make theirs — that courage and persistence bring change and that there are good people out there who will work, with all of our help, to make it happen.

Parent should know that this story concerns a real-life trial for rape and attempted murder with sexual references and situations, themes of racism including beatings and police brutality, some strong language, domestic violence, and some strong and racist language.

Family discussion: Why did Marshall represent only innocent clients? Did Spell have a fair trial? What has improved since that time? What has not?

If you like this, try: “Separate But Equal” and “Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP”

NOTE: Read my interview with Boseman and director Reginald Hudlin at rogerebert.com