July 2023 – MOVIESMARKUS

Is there such a thing as a soulmate? Is there such a thing as fate? In writer/director Celine Song’s feature debut, she examines these notions when telling the story of two childhood sweethearts, Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who are separated when Nora’s family leaves South Korea. They lose touch but not their connection, as throughout the years they correspond via the internet, holding on to their unwavering attraction. It isn’t until over twenty years later that they mutually agree to meet when Hae Sung decides to travel to New York, where Nora now lives with her husband Arthur (John Magaro).

More than just your average love triangle drama, Song creates a quiet masterpiece, which through her characters, her direction and some stellar performances, tells the story of the passage of time as it pertains to the fate of two individuals. It’s not until the second half of the movie that these two see each other as adults, but during every moment Nora and Hae Sung share the screen, Song constructs a space where the world falls away and her characters are allowed to live the purity of their bond, albeit knowing that at any moment the real world will come crashing down upon them as time moves forward.

Told from the perspective of a first-generation immigrant living in America, the love Nora has for both men (her husband and her first love) in her adult life should also be seen as the symbolic struggle of someone with one foot in two cultures. This is a movie which explores the ever-present love for one’s home (the culture one grew up immersed in) and a new land that one wishes to plant their roots. The idea of having two names (one being an “American” name). The idea of having two lives, where two different languages are spoken. It’s all examined here through some of the most beautiful cinematography and direction I’ve seen all year, capturing Song’s grander themes regarding how devastating life can be, not solely through character dialogue, but glances and body language, and how her characters are framed on-screen at any given moment.

Final Thought: Holding true to its thematic concepts of the allure of forbidden love, the idea of fate and our cultural connection between the past and present, “Past Lives” is both visually and tonally brilliant enough to be considered a theatrical cousin to a movie like “In the Mood for Love”. And that’s arguably the best praise I can give it, so I think I’ll stop there.

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A huge reason “The Blackening” works as well as it does is simply because the humor within this horror/comedy written and directed by Black people, is made for Black people. This statement may seem obvious, but with it I only mean to say that this film has no real desire to commodify Blackness for a white audience, like so many mainstream Black comedies tend to do.

Synopsis: A group of Black friends (Antoinette Roberton, Dewayne Perkins, Siqua Walls, Grace Byers, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo and Jermaine Fowler) reunite in a cabin in the woods to celebrate Juneteenth. During their stay, they discover a board game that looks racist as hell called “The Blackening” (and hilariously referred to by the group as “Jim Crow Monopoly”). At that point they are forced by a mysterious masked killer to play said game, where the object is to determine who is the “Blackest” and therefore who should die first.

Admittedly, as a Black man I walked into this film with much trepidation. The trailers looked cringy and buffoonish. And the tagline which read, “we can’t all die first” referring to the horror stereotype of Black characters always dying first, seemed like the setup for a single-joke premise elongated by a smattering of low hanging fruit comedy, depicting Black people put on screen solely to be laughed at.

But fairly early on my expectations were subverted. After about ten minutes into the movie, with the introduction of actual three-dimensional Black characters and a slew of well written and very targeted jokes, “The Blackening” quickly establishes itself as a more than worthy horror/comedy with an engaging whodunit throughline. Not to say that there aren’t any cheap laughs, but not for one moment did I feel as though I was stuck in a theater watching an improv group.

Final Thought: For me this felt like “Scream” for the Black community. Yeah, I said it. Meaning, it’s a movie that could’ve been “just another slasher”, checking all of the boxes, but instead chose to do something more. To engage in some meta-cinema with a specific audience, never taking a moment to explain the bulk of the jokes or handhold the uninitiated; trusting that the material is strong enough to entertain everyone in the theater. “The Blackening” is a movie with familiar horror/comedy aspects, but unapologetically centers Black audiences. And it’s more than good enough to create its own distinct spot within the genre. That’s right, director Tim Story’s name can finally be attached to a good movie.

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