It is, of course, a damning testament to this particular moment in cinematic culture that a relatively big-budget, big studio film from a very successful director should be noteworthy specifically as being a film of Big Ideas beyond capes, tights, and previously disgorged IP. Nevertheless, Ryan Coogler’s horror/comedy/musical/race drama treatise presents more ideas to chew on in its 137 minute run time than some entire summers worth of Hollywood ‘tentpoles.’
Like Spike Lee’s masterwork, Do The Right Thing, it posits a story very much to do with racial politics and cultural appropriation, but doesn’t simplify its message, or turn its characters into clumsy, one-dimensional avatars of thematic messaging (we’re looking at you, Crash, and Green Card). Instead, Coogler, who also wrote the screenplay, allows for differing interpretations of what we’re seeing. Like the very best artists, he leads his audience to the water trough but allows them to decide whether or not to take a drink.
Set in rural Mississippi in 1932, we follow a pair of twins, known as Smoke (Michael B. Jordan) and Stack (IBID), recently returned to their hometown from a stint in Chicago, working as muscle for Al Capone. With them, they’ve brought a literal truckload of illicitly gained booze, beer, and satchels of money, which they’ve somehow managed to appropriate by staging heists as if from already warring Chi-town gangs.
Their dream is to open their own juke-joint, a place where Black folks can come, dance to live music, drink their fill of hooch, and relax beyond the prying eyes of the white people in town. To that end, they buy an old saw mill off a good ol’ boy realtor (David Maldonado) — who, naturally, later turns out to be a member in good standing with the Klan — and entice their young cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton), the son of a preacher (Saul Williams), and a guitar prodigy (wearing his fedora at a stylish slant, he’s a dead ringer for Robert Johnson — decidedly not a coincidence), to provide music alongside blues legend Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo).
Not everyone is thrilled with the twins’ return, however. Stack’s formidable wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), whom he left after the stillborn death of their baby daughter, is still caught in their shared vortex of grief; and Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), Smoke’s longtime love, has returned to town from some sort of arranged marriage Smoke set up for her in Arkansas, to let him know she won’t be so easily removed from his life, even if it’s for her own good.
Adding to the complications, an Irishman named Remmick (Jack O’Connell) has also newly arrived in the area, with a Native American posse in close pursuit. Remmick convinces a kindly young couple (Peter Dreimanis and Lola Kirke) to invite him into their house to protect him against these bloodthirsty savages, only to turn on his benefactors and drink deep of their blood, turning them into fellow vampires.
Everything congregates that evening, as the juke joint is hopping, and the music and booze are pouring out in deliriously copious amounts — including a stunning shot as Coogler’s camera swoops around the wood-board dance floor, integrating music from different generations of Black culture, from African tribal beats, to modern DJ spinning, sweeping everything up in a timelessly joyous celebration of sound and rhythm — before the arrival of Remmick and his newly turned vamp couple, ostensibly there to join in the musical fun (though they want to play bluegrass, of course).
Refused entry, they move some distance away, playing hymnals until finally, Mary goes out to ask them to leave — a decision that doesn’t end well. Before too long, the vamps have added many of the twins’ customers to their ranks and threaten to kill everyone remaining inside, forcing a stand off, as the vampiric rules clearly state they can’t enter a premises until the occupants actually agree to their visitation, an invitation that is decidedly not forthcoming.
An interesting thing happens in this classic set up, however: Despite the film’s early intonations of the vamps being pure “evil,” and their penchant for the grisly mauling of the necks of innocents, as Remmick suggests, they are, at least, not themselves divisive or racist. Any neck will do, which makes the growing legion of Remmick’s fanged army as diverse as a farmers’ market in Jackson Heights.
In one of the film’s most startling scenes, Remmick and his minions gather in unified choreography and stage a proper Irish jig, with their joyous leader dancing in dead center, a counter-argument, as it were, to the earlier scene of Black celebration — with their culture subsumed by the vampiric predilections of their new leader.
Just what Coogler is up to here is very much open to interpretation: Are the vamps representatives of a white culture that routinely subsumed legit Black art forms as its own (see Presley, Elvis and/or Ice, Vanilla, et al.)? Is this juxtaposition a horror movie staple of living vs. dead — or as the film’s opening coda suggests, a “piercing of the veil between life and death”? Or is the idea more that musical forms be damned, music itself is the great connection point between human beings?
Intriguingly clouding the matter is the way Remmick and the rest of the vampiric contingency are themselves represented. Once turned, it’s not as if the victims are completely lost, a la zombification. They are mostly themselves, it would seem, but no longer bound by earthly constraints, which, for some of the more oppressed peoples, might actually be an improvement over their lot.
As much as the film plays up the idea of the vamps’ evil — replete with glowing devil eyes, and a huckster’s ability to endear themselves with strangers before turning the bloody switch — it also makes a case for them not being the actual villains of the story. That would be reserved for the Klan members who descend upon the juke joint in the wee hours of the next morning, looking to take out the high-and-mighty twins who dared pay for their place in cash.
Indeed, in the first of two stingers mid-and post credits (you can take the boy out of Marvel, it would seem, but not altogether take the Marvel out of the boy), it becomes clear that some of the vamps actually do follow a code of ethics, as it were, placing them more generously in the moral shadows than pure darkness.
It’s a complicated film, is the point, leaving critics and pundits writing breathless barrages of words (guilty!) analyzing the various intricacies and didactics of Coogler’s vision. One thing is surely clear, however: The film is very much designed to be seen with a community of others — in fact, having been filmed in 70mm IMAX, it is ideally seen in the type of theater of which there are precious few of in this country, but nevertheless — watched on a big screen in the presence of strangers, who can come together and bond over the wonder they are witnessing. We will doubtlessly be inundated with the usual big studio CGI slop soon enough, Coogler has at least given us a chance to experience a genuine moment of pure cinema with one another before that unwelcome onslaught.
