Barry Jenkins was introduced to most of us through Moonlight, the brilliant tale of a young man going through his three phases of development, played by three different actors at three different ages.
We follow the young man as he comes to terms with his own sexuality and relationship with his drug addicted mom.
It was a great 'hood movie that’s not a stereotypical 'hood movie and with The Underground Railroad, Barry Jenkins makes a great slave drama that isn’t just a slave drama.
Let's dig in...
Based on a Pulitzer winning book by Colson Whitehead (I haven’t read it but it's definitely on my reading list after the series), Jenkins mixes different genres, from magic realism, to touches of the nouveau black horror (that we’ve seen in Get Out and Them), to a road movie genre.
All these tell the story of Cora and her run for freedom.
This could have been another 12 Years a Slave, but Jenkins has made it something akin to Les Misérables (not the musical): a series that not only reflects the time it lives in, but the nasty truth about the country the story is portrayed in.
Cora is our Jean Valjean-like type and Ridgeway a not-so-honourable Javert type. While Les Misérables shows the fallacy of the noble class in France, The Underground Railroad shows the poison of white supremacy in America through its different guises.
It shows how slavery shall forever plague the US and, unfortunately, African Americans.
Ridgeway, played by Joel Edgerton, is possessed with bringing in Cora, in the same way Javert was fixated on arresting Jean Valjean.
But Ridgeway’s motives are even more sinister because he is a broken man who has plagued generations of Cora’s family and people. The lowest of the low when it comes to human beings.
The magic realism touches are seen in how the drama reimagines the underground railroad as an actual train with an actual train conductor. It's also in the bizarre dream sequences and premonitions that are scattered through the series.
But it’s the character of Cora and Thuso Mbedu who are the heart of the series.
Cora is not just a runaway, but a daughter dealing with abandonment issues as it relates to her mom - a famous runaway.
Cora feels resentment towards her for leaving her on the plantation as a child instead of taking her with her.
But Cora's issues don’t end with being neglected by mom. She's a black woman trying to find love as a slave, which basically means she has no agency over herself, her sexuality or even her will, but she continues to fight for it.
On top of all that, she has to deal with the white gaze that comes in different forms from Ridgeway to well-meaning white folks to white liberals with hidden agendas.
The gaze does not just stop her from existing, it hampers her love life, it hampers her self-actualization, it took away her mother and it threatens to destroy her from the inside out.
Thuso Mbedu is extraordinary and those eyes and small frame say a lot. She's able to convey vulnerability to toughness, but above all else she gives Cora a real meat and bone sensibility.
A sensibility that reveals how she’s a person caught in extra ordinary times but is somehow able to hold on to her humanity and dare to love in a time that doesn't nourish love and humanity. She's so much more than just a fictitious character in a wild story.
Jenkins has created a masterpiece that interrogates what America is. The answer is not pretty because Episode 9 answers it clearly, stating what America is and what is keeping it back from being the truly great nation it thinks it is, or pretends to be.
Jenkins takes his time in crafting his argument against white hegemony e.g. through the young Chase Dillon, who plays Homer, Ridgeway's little black helper. Homer showcases what association with whiteness can do to blackness.
The fate of the wine farm shows the two impulses of the reaction of blackness to whiteness that has plagued the US since its inception.
This arises every time in different forms in each generation, just like the BLM movement vs All Lives Matter cynics that we're dealing with today.
Les Misérables showcases that France's dreams of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity didn't translate to the ordinary citizen who was dehumanised by poverty. There was a necessity for true compassion for the society to change.
The Underground Railroad shows that America has, and always will have, a white hegemony problem and that slavery crystilizes it.
Until that history is addressed there will be many damaged Graces, Coras, Homers...
It felt like: 12 Years a Slave meets Get Out.
Verdict:
*****
Index
*Junk **You are on your own ***It tries ****Almost Perfect *****Instant Classic