Small Axe Anthology (Steve McQueen): Mangrove

[Ezee E]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Poster_for_2020_film_Mangrove. jpg

WIKI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove_(film))

[Peng]

Effective, and for quite a while it's only that, though aided by Steve McQueen's usual formal chop (a few minutes of camera holding still after a raid reminds me of 12 Years a Slave's one sequence of small eternity), but it gains in complexity and productive complications as it heads into the courtroom proceedings, especially in the question of individual gain vs collective goal, and by the end I am swept away. Letitia Wright and Malachi Kirby as the more fiery figures are great, but Shaun Parkes is the smoldering, slowly ignited fire that really provides the emotional backbone of the whole thing. Radicalization by everyday perseverance. 7.5/10

[Ezee E]

Effective, and for quite a while it's only that, though aided by Steve McQueen's usual formal chop (a few minutes of camera holding still after a raid reminds me of 12 Years a Slave's one sequence of small eternity), but it gains in complexity and productive complications as it heads into the courtroom proceedings, especially in the question of individual gain vs collective goal, and by the end I am swept away. Letitia Wright and Malachi Kirby as the more fiery figures are great, but Shaun Parkes is the smoldering, slowly ignited fire that really provides the emotional backbone of the whole thing. Radicalization by everyday perseverance. 7.5/10

You basically nailed it.

McQueen really uses the strong acting to tee up his long trademark shots, which are as effective as they've ever been. In Red, White and Blue it seemed forced, but he's on it here.

[Pop Trash]

In Red, White and Blue it seemed forced, but he's on it here.

That's my fave one so far, but we'll get to that in its own thread.

[Ezee E]

That's my fave one so far, but we'll get to that in its own thread.

Page two I think.

[Stay Puft]

Yay, but with reservations. I thought this moved in fits and starts, with some of McQueen's long takes not really making much sense dramatically; like that extended punctuation of silence after the second raid, it didn't do anything for me. Why that one, and not the one before, or after. Why that particular beat? What was emotionally significant about it really? Some of them are powerful, no doubt; I particularly liked Chrichlow ranting after being manhandled in court, since it's a rupture of the expected rituals and decorum of the setting. That one makes more sense. But like with Widows, a lot of this is just a punching up of genre tropes, and while some of the sequences are riveting and engrossing, McQueen is largely spelling things out and coloring in the lines. That's not really a criticism since it's true to the details and McQueen was clearly being careful to get the story "right," (and even just looking at pictures of the real life people involved, they did an insane job on the casting) but I've already watched Lovers Rock and the filmmaking is so much more impressive in that one that this suffers a little in retrospect.