‘Passing’ Patiently Presents a Black-and-White-and-Shades-of-Grey Portrait of Getting By

October 26, 2021

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , 1 Comment

Passing (CREDIT: Netflix)

Starring: Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, André Holland, Bill Camp, Alexander Skarsgård

Director: Rebecca Hall

Running Time: 98 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 mainly for The Utterance of a Few Racial Slurs

Release Date: October 27, 2021 (Theaters)/November 10, 2021 (Netflix)

So much of Passing consists of just conversations. Anything more would be too dangerous. Actually the conversations are already plenty dangerous.

Based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel of the same, it all begins with a slightly surreal encounter. Surreal in the sense that when dreaming, we randomly encounter people from our pasts that we haven’t seen for a while and yet it makes perfect sense. And so it goes when Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) bumps into her old friend Clare Bellew (Ruth Negga) and discovers that she’s been utilizing her light skin tone to pass herself off as a white woman. This includes being married to a proudly racist man (Alexander Skarsgård) and privately hoping that her children don’t arrive any darker than her. She’s living on the razor’s edge, but she’s so matter of fact about it all, as if to say (without actually coming out and saying it) that what she’s doing is perfectly logical.

Writer/director Rebecca Hall (in her directorial debut) takes an understandably patient approach to the material in which not much happens, because everyone is holding themselves back from what they can’t allow to happen. This results in Passing feeling significantly longer than it actually is, which is an observation that is usually meant as a criticism, but in this case I mean it as neutrally as possible. Perhaps the explanation for this temporal confusion is that Clare has the ability to warp the perception of reality within the people in her orbit. She’s the one who’s primarily doing the title action, but it’s Reenie and her husband Brian (André Holland) who get most of the film’s attention, as their relatively comfortable Harlem existence is threatened by just the slightest hint of chaos. There are some lighter moments (particularly any scene with Bill Camp as Reenie and Brian’s regular jazz club companion), but otherwise you can practically see the seams of existence being torn asunder.

It all leads up to a violent climax that might have you grateful that something is finally happening to move the plot forward, although that gratefulness will probably fade in the face of the tragedy. Perhaps you will adjust your gratefulness to think that at least this sort of thing is unlikely to happen again a century later. But while passing between different racial settings might not look exactly the same as it did in previous eras, everyday deceit and the rationalization of such deceit still exists. This is a slow-burning disaster movie; if you ever find yourself in a similar situation and you don’t want the ending to be the same as Clare’s, then you might just want to do more than talk.

Passing is Recommended If You Like: The Harlem Renaissance, Smoke-filled jazz rooms, Tragedy predetermined by the whims of fate

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Deceptions

Movie Review: Fly Me Away, ‘Ad Astra’

September 27, 2019

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CREDIT: Francois Duhamel/Twentieth Century Fox

Ad Astra, whaddya got for us?

Daddy issues? Check.

A plot about space travel that sure seems like a metaphor for the emotional space between a parent and child? Check.

Am I getting 2001 vibes? Sure. Not quite as psychedelic, of course, but the feeling of being unmoored and location-less (and somehow kind of liking it) is definitely there.

Was I nodding off while I watched? Yah.

Is that a mark against the film? Nah, it’s more about my own physiology. Nevertheless, I think Ad Astra works as a nice lullaby.

I give Ad Astra 5 Launches out of 4 Landings.

This Is a Movie Review: Loving

November 3, 2016

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loving-movie-ruth-negga-joel-edgerton

This review was originally published on News Cult in November 2016.

Starring: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Nick Kroll

Director: Jeff Nichols

Running Time: 123 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Prejudice and the Paranoia That Goes with It

Release Date: November 4, 2016 (Limited)

Director Jeff Nichols is known for including a tinge of the supernatural in his films, especially the apocalyptic Take Shelter and the little-kid-with-mysterious-powers thriller Midnight Special. But even in his ostensibly more realistic pics, like the Southern McConaissance drama Mud, there is a spiritually arousing sense of magic in the air. His latest, Loving, which tells the true-life story behind the 1967 Supreme Court case that struck down the last of this country’s anti-miscegenation laws, achieves that same miraculous sense of wonder by keeping the focus on the day-to-day realities of committed romance under siege.

As Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred (Ruth Negga) Loving’s case makes it way from the local county court to the Virginia Supreme Court all the way to the highest court in the land, there are surprisingly few scenes that actually take place inside a courtroom. The message effectively becomes: love speaks for itself. The film does not see the need for showstopping dramatic speeches, because who needs to be convinced about the rightness of what those speeches would say? Instead, the story mostly sticks with the Lovings’ domestic life, which is constantly under siege, but resolutely tender.

Despite Loving’s lack of interest in legal jargon or courtroom clichés, it does make time for a mini-arc for the titular couple’s main lawyer. When we meet him, Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll) has little experience with civil rights cases, but he is ambitious enough, or foolhardy enough, to plow right ahead to a potential meeting with the Supreme Court. The casting of Kroll, as much of a novice to high-profile drama as Cohen is to precedent-setting litigation, proves surprisingly apt.

As essential as Kroll’s performance is, it is (like the rest of the movie, and as it should be) all in service to the Lovings. The key line comes when Cohen asks Richard, who has declined to appear during the Supreme Court hearing, if he would like him to tell the justices anything. “Tell the judge I love my wife,” he declares softly but demonstrably.

Edgerton plays Richard as a man who just wants to get on with making a good life for his wife and children. He is uncomfortable with the media attention his marriage receives and flummoxed by the prejudice it engenders. This is in sharp contrast to Negga, who plays Mildred with fragile expressions that belie her steely emotions. Their complementary approaches to overcoming the ordeal of their life are inspiring. It feels like they were destined to be the couple to break down barriers. The poetic perfection of their last name also contributes to that sense. If they were not already called the Lovings, supernaturally inclined Jeff Nichols would have had to christen them thus.

Loving is Recommended If You Like: To Kill a Mockingbird, That feeling you got when the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage constitutional, Actors who look just like the real people they’re portraying

Grade: 4 out of 5 Loves That Conquer All