Story by James Frey & Lena Waithe
Screenplay Written by Lena Waithe
Directed by Melina Matsoukas
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
RATED R
I have said it before upon this site, and here I am having the need to express these thoughts once again. I distinctly remember the night on July 13, 2013 when George Zimmerman was found not guilty for the murder of 17 year old Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012. I remember seeing the verdict on television and thinking out loud...
"It is now 'Open Season' on Black people."
Again I have to express that in the time since that horrific, seemingly impossible verdict, we have seen the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, a protest that has, in equal measures horrific and seemingly impossible, has received considerable push-back and outright derision. Police shootings, and therefore murders, of unarmed Black people, and with no sense of legal retribution have grown to levels I feel are at an epidemic, especially as these crimes against humanity have seemingly grown more bold and brazen, precisely because they are now being filmed and even still, there is no sense of justice.
And again, I have to express that gun laws have become lessened just as "Stand Your Ground" laws have only become more enforced. And just having the now routine images and news stories about White people having the police called to investigate Black people for having a barbecue, for entering their own homes, for taking a nap in a student commons area and so on, have all made me more fearful for my own safety than I have ever been in my lifetime.
My skin color and size have never been more apparent to me as I have grown more, and rightfully, paranoid with how others may perceive me without ever speaking one word to me and how they may or may not react to me upon seeing me. And again and again, I have to express that the sight of police cars as I am driving, especially at night, give me serious pause, making me wonder with fright, what would I do if I were to be pulled over. Would any moment like that be the final moments of my life? This is being Black in America, right NOW in 2019.
Yes, I felt the intense need to say those words all over again.
Tapping into this terrifying, mournful, maddening and now expected aspect of what it means to be Black in America, we arrive with Director Melina Matsoukas' "Queen & Slim," an atmospheric, meditative road movie during which our titular characters find themselves up on a date and then, the subjects of a manhunt over the course of six days in the blink of an eye. It is a sobering, somber film that is by turns crackling with energy, poetic in its pathos, and submerged in the life and pain of two African-Americans in a world they never made that has now turned its cross-hairs upon them. Beyond that, Matsoukas and Writer Lena Waithe have perceptively and wisely created a film that explores the subjective nature of prejudices and stereotypes in a deft fashion that smartly and uncomfortably involves the audience as well, forcing us to examine ourselves as we regard this doomed affair.
In a small Cleveland, Ohio restaurant, sit Queen (played by Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (played by Daniel Kaluuya), out on what is essentially a blind date and the date is going badly. It is an evening already fraught with mixed messages, misrepresentations, and a tension that could be considered sexual or even romantic if not for the obvious fact that the two clearly are not finding a connection.
Queen is a criminal defense attorney, who at this time is despondent due to a lost case earlier in the day, while Slim is an employee of Costco. Slim prays before eating his meal. Queen does not and appears irritated to be in the presence of something so private and possibly foreign to herself. Queen, clearly disapproving of the meager quality of the restaurant, openly questions whether the establishment was all Slim could afford, to which he replies that he chose this restaurant because "It is Black owned." Touche. Trying to work a new angle, Slim asks Queen why she decided to swipe on his photo and call him to which she replies that in his profile photo he looked "sad" and that she felt sorry for him. Ouch.
They finish eating and Slim begins to drive Queen home, a jaunt that is beginning to feel interminable and is undoubtedly not going to lead to anything remotely intimate. As the car sways in the late night traffic due to a mini-tiff between the two, Queen and Slim are soon pulled over by an antagonistic--and White--police officer, leading to an altercation that leaves the police officer dead and Queen and Slim now on the run, their lives upended forever.
Melina Matsoukas' "Queen & Slim" is an evocative, nuanced experience that combines the epic nature of the road movie with the intimacy of a relationship drama as filtered through the lens of the Black Experience. Certainly, comparisons to Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) will be made by viewers as well as some of the characters in the film itself. But for me, Matsoukas created an experience that is more in line with Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider" (1969) and definitely Ridley Scott and Writer Callie Khouri's now iconic "Thelma & Louise" (1991), films where outsiders, disenfranchised and the discriminated find themselves all on the wrong end of America's malevolence and all to a tragic effect.
The tragedy of Melina Matsoukas' "Queen & Slim" does not arrive through any sense of conceptual unpredictability. The tragedy arrives in real-as-life inevitability. It would not prove itself to be any sort of a spoiler to suggest that the film concludes with grim inevitability, for any one of you who has been paying any attention whatsoever to the social/political/cultural/racial events of our modern times, the outcome of Queen and Slim's journey is as brutally obvious as it is honest.
In fact, what Matsoukas has accomplished is presenting yet one more impassioned film that is effectively designed for the Black Lives Matter era, a film that walks cinematic hand in hand with Ryan Coogler's "Fruitvale Station" (2013) and George Tillman Jr.'s "The Hate U Give" (2018), as they each are the screams of the Black community to the nation at large that we are human beings deserving of living life as much as our White counterparts.
To that end, Matsoukas' film works powerfully alongside Steve McQueen's "12 Years A Slave" (2013) and even Damon Lindelof and HBO's shockingly outstanding "Watchmen" television series. She and Waithe depict precisely that for Black people in America, even in the 21st century, we are never as free as we think or as free as we wish ourselves to being as our lives can change in a split second for no other reason than for the color of our skin and the ignorance, fear, prejudices of those who project their demons onto us as well as a social/political infrastructure that is purposefully designed against us.
At its core, I feel that "Queen & Slim" is an exploration of perceptions and the subjectivity that allows us to place a certain significance upon individuals when they could possibly be the furthest from the truth...and at times, without any conceivable knowledge of the truth. Just take the film's opening sequence at the diner. Lena Waithe's screenplay writing is never more riveting and brilliant than in that first scene when every line of dialogue is a firecracker that blows up any pre-conceived perceptions both Queen and Slim have towards each other.
Certainly, as they are pulled over, the perceptions of fear and racism from the police officer's vantage point are obviously the engine driving the confrontation. As the twosome go on the run and their story via the police officer's dash camera which recorded the altercation hits the media, everyone that views the footage is then able to dream up their own individualized perceptions and misconceptions about Queen and Slim, neither of whom are outlaws by an stretch of the imagination. But only we in the audience know that to be a fact. Yet, even so, we, sitting comfortably in our movie theater seats are not let off of the hook as we do not even learn of these two characters' real name until the film's final moments, showing us how little we all knew of these two human beings relentlessly hunted down like game.
Matsoukas and Waithe continue this conceptual thread throughout the Queen and Slim's odyssey via the characters they meet along the way, from a mechanic, a teenager, the intensely complicated existence of Black police officers when played against White police officers and the African-American community to a White couple (played by Chloe Sevigny and, surprise, surprise, Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers) in Florida to whom the twosome are directed for sanctuary.
For me, the most compelling figure was of Queen's Uncle Earl (played by a superbly magnetic Bokeem Woodbine), an Iraq war veteran suffering from PTSD, who is now living in a small New Orleans home now living out his existence as a pimp. This character was one deserving of his own feature film as richly conceived as he was in a few brief scenes. On sight, we have formulated a perception and then we are challenged as we learn more and more of his backstory, as it plays out with his conflicted relationships with the women in his life, while he also provides Queen and Slim with crucial aid on their escape.
And through everything we experience, so richly through Matsoukas' direction, Waithe's strong script, as well as Cinematographer Tat Radcliffe's stunning visuals (I swear every time the color blue appeared, I felt chills of impending doom) and the diverse and exquisitely curated collection of songs that provide's our titular characters with their musical voices, the performances of Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith hold us powerfully as through them, we see the humanity that the world refuses to acknowledge.
When will the world acknowledge our humanity? This is the plea of Melina Matsoukas' "Queen & Slim," where the only moment of freedom arrives in the rush of the breeze upon the skin through a open car window in a world where freedom should exist within every moment we take a breath.
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