The Underground Railroad Review: Barry Jenkins Fantasy Series Is A Triumph

In Barry Jenkins’ 10 hour historical fantasy miniseries The subway, Regret is cross-generational, passed on in a family as easily as eye color or hair texture. The subway, adapted from the Moonlight The director of Colson Whiteheads’ 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is set at the Georgia Antebellum. However, it would be a mistake to call the series a slave narrative. There is only pain and suffering in a genre originally intended to end slavery by explaining the horrors of plantation life to white readers in the north.

That look jumped from the pages of literature and dominated contemporary movie screens in films such as Friendship, 12 years slave, The birth of a nation, and Antebellum. Jenkins removes this gaze and uses slavery as a canvas for a journey to freedom, and not just in front of harmful slavers and brutal masters – out of this regret of the generations.

Cora was just 10 years old when her slave mother Mabel (Sheila Atim) abandoned her and ran from her plantation north to never be seen again. This betrayal left a wound in the adult Cora (Thuso Mbedu), and the anger festered there. Cora now sees her mother as a monster and herself a plague for the world. To end her journey out of slavery, she must escape not only the plantation, but also the hatred she has for Mabel. She has to learn to forgive and to see herself as a whole again. For these reasons, Whitehead and Jenkins’ The subway is not a story of dehumanization, but of re-humanization.

At the beginning of the series, the intrepid Caesar (a stunning Aaron Pierre) speaks of an escape to Cora. His robust body and penetrating hazel eyes hide several truths: He can read and knows a way from the plantation. He wants Cora to join him and believes that she is lucky enough to be her mother. But she doesn’t consider herself special. Only after a series of horrific events that make the series premiere the worst episode, she accepts Caesar’s gentle support and escapes with him. Everywhere in the Georgian countryside, through dense forests and cloudy swamps – welcome memories of Andrei Tarkovsky Ivan’s childhood

– You are traveling dangerously in search of a station building.

When I first heard the phrase “subway” as a kid, I thought it was a literal locomotive whirling beneath the surface bringing blacks to the rescue. Jenkins makes this fantasy come true. In this fabled alternate universe there is a system of elegantly dressed girders, dark tunnels, bending rails and embellished trains where mystical fairy dust seems to emanate from the harsh orange glow of the locomotives.

Some stations only work in caves, while others, like subway stations in New York City, are intricately tiled. Not every line connects. A terminal may be abandoned or deemed unsafe for travel, usually due to an increase in white racial violence in the area. Before a passenger can board the train, they must present their credentials for the station master to record in a ledger similar to those used to track the sale of slaves at auctions.

While other filmmakers shape slave narratives around suffering to prove the value of black history – be it through shocking violence or jerky screams like those who dominate Antebellum – Jenkins is unencumbered. It’s not that he negates the white gaze or consciously speaks to a particular black tenor. He tells a human story first and gives Cora’s sly smile and Caesar’s passionate speeches personality. He knows that its inherent meaning becomes as natural as water flows through a canal to the audience and its obstacles become all the more palpable.

“Either promised land or dystopian hell,” is how film professor Paula Massood once described the attitude of black literature towards the city. The description also applies to Cora’s journey to the west, a southern Gothic odyssey caused in part by the notorious slave catcher Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton), who failed to locate Mabel and is now desperately trying to catch Cora. He is accompanied by Homer (Chase W. Dillon), a precocious black boy who wears a fine suit and a mustard-yellow bowler hat. Their friendship mirrors that of Daniel Plainview and HW in It will be blood: Despite their age difference, they are business partners. Ridgeway protects Homer from this terrible landscape and teaches him how to capture slaves. Homer makes his employer aware of oncoming dangers.

Jenkins is really excited about the added range of narratives and characters that television allows. A character like Ridgeway would normally be reduced to appearing like a crazy heel. Instead, Jenkins and his scripting team measure this villain and fill in the blanks in Ridgeway’s incongruences. For a stretch of three episodes, you could almost be mistaken that this series only concerns the slave catcher and not the way he drags Cora west towards escape. But Edgerton is so menacing and adorable, and young Dillon such a revelation, who could accuse Jenkins of giving them screen space?

The cast is overflowing with so much new talent, including the warm, Pierre as Caesar and the delicate William Jackson Harper (The good place) as Royal, a cowboy and railroad officer who was drawn to Cora. Short characters like Ellis (Marcus “MJ” Gladney Jr.), a conductor in training; Grace (Mychal-Bella Bowman), a North Carolina girl hiding in an attic; Jasper, a hymn-singing Floridian slave; and Mingo (Chukwudi Iwuji), a former upper class slave who lives on an Indiana farm, are unforgettable because Jenkins never loses his personality. They may endure terrible hardship, but find deep realms of happiness immutable.

The scale of The subway feels immeasurable. Each state Cora visits emits a different timbre and tone, from lush to barren, from green greens, maroon reds, warm marigolds, and deep, embracing blues to stifled gray. Each shot is bursting with extras, creating a collage of costumes that evoke unwritten lifetimes for those who wear them. In a fantastic scene, Cora visits a large terminal, whereupon black people of different backgrounds, from slaves in field clothes to wealthy African-Americans, come together on an otherworldly platform.

To capture the detailed saga, Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton, a longtime collaborator, increased their visual acumen. In dynamic shots, the camera moves down from a high point of view and fits seamlessly into the composition of the scene. Heavenly light fills the frames and envelops the people whom Cora should trust, as if the divine decides our point of view.

Nicholas Britell’s floating score is to weave through the show’s slave narrative, South Gothic tension, and Western moods. Jenkins and Britell are masters at creating tension in quiet scenes, as in the Brian Tyree Henry sequence in If Beale Street could talk

. A similar use of sound seems to lurk around every corner The subwaywhile Cora and Caesar run to the train station or accompany the restorative sight of a locomotive. The trilling of cicadas rises to thunderous levels. Echoes of clatter run towards us as if we were in a cacophonic railway tunnel. And soaring threads send us on the run.

The breadth of the streak means you shouldn’t binge The subway. It’s too narrative, visually and sonically dense, too carefully calibrated, too overflowing with a syrupy mix of Mediterranean dialects to appreciate in one consumption. Better to watch an episode or two a day by grouping the two-part, state-named episodes such as “Tennessee” into one session.

Indeed, Jenkins is aware of the difficulties involved in looking at the difficult subject. That’s why he closes each episode with a pinprick and plays Kendrick Lamar, Outkast and so on. in the Lovecraft Land, The creator Misha Green regularly added current hits like “Bitch Better Have My Money” to her stories from the 1950s. But these drops did not achieve the desired effect. Instead, they broke the illusion of the historical play. Conversely, Jenkins wants to destroy the imagination and enable the audience to leave this world undeterred and safely return to reality within a song.

As weighty as the miniseries feels, the audience never escapes the newly humanizing message that Jenkins is conveying. On this trip, Cora learns about the tests her mother probably faced. By forgiving her mother, she re-humanizes herself, much like Chiron re-creates a tortured teenager as a balanced adult Moonlight. Showing the joy and laughter, love and determination mixed with the horror, Jenkins turns historical slaves away from suffering props for white consumption and gives them dignity. In Thuso Mbedu’s resolute, sincere turn as Cora, she fills us with an equally unfathomable grace.

After the grueling attack of the black characters on the screen in Antebellum, Bad hair, Lovecraft Land, and youI wasn’t sure I could handle it The subway. So many others have failed to write slave stories about anything more than surviving outrage, humiliation and pain. I was afraid Jenkins would too.

But I felt different when I finished this mystical, surreal epic. I felt uplifted and was not ashamed to look in the eyes of this era of history. I cheered with no regrets. Cried. Roared. I opened my arms like the tracks that lit the way to another land, a better land. It’s because of Jenkins’ care. And from The subwayBottom line, the last sun-drenched shot that filled me with peace, that shaped blacks’ right to live as overt fate, I had only one thought – it actually did it. He really did. Jenkins escaped the cycle of tired torture stories and found a tunnel devoid of the unfortunate weight caused by Hollywood’s past mistakes.

All 10 episodes of The subway continue streaming now Amazon Prime Video.