The Best Movies About Race in America Are Getting Ignored
This story is part of my weekly “Have you seen …” series where I highlight movies that I think are under-appreciated, misunderstood, or simply worth talking about. New entries are published every Wednesday.
In February 2019, Green Book won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Jesus wept.
I personally don’t give much of a shit about the Oscars, and I think the world of cinema would probably be better without them. Green Book’s win, however, is just the tip of an often-mischaracterized iceberg: we clamor for representation in film, only to ignore the movies that do it the best.
I’m not just talking about big-budget problem children like Green Book or The Help; no one needs a lecture on how American moviegoers might not be the most willing crowd to have their views on races challenged at the multiplex. I’m talking about the movies that the supposedly cinematically-literature gravitate towards as well.
The Oscars ceremony at which Green Book won Best Picture had two other films competing for the prize that featured race as a consequential theme: BlacKkKlansman and Black Panther. Both are good films, but both are also bogged down with issues: the former has its highly questionable manipulation of the facts surrounding Ron Stallworth’s life and the latter, as valuable a monument to representation as it may be, is still a fundamentally conservative film designed to appeal to mass audiences — not to challenge them.
The fact that three films that debatably added very little value to the conversation around race in America were all nominated for Best Picture might be excusable if there were no other options — but, uh, there were. Of particular note is Barry Jenkins’s unsung masterpiece If Beale Street Could Talk, an adaptation of the James Baldwin novel of the same name.
As with his previous feature Moonlight, Beale Street showcases Jenkins’s unparalleled eye for cinematic beauty as well as his capacity for human empathy. The film is at once a love story and a showcase of the kaleidoscopic nature of urban life: in her quest to clear the name of her wrongfully-imprisoned lover, Tish Rivers encounters characters of all races and motivations, each of which Jenkins gives a remarkable air of humanity. One of the most ignored aspects of Baldwin’s thought is his belief that the story of race in America is one in which every individual plays a part, and Jenkins demonstrates a masterful understanding of this concept.
Even so, Beale Street arrived at the 91st Academy Awards with three nominations and left with one trophy for Regina King’s supporting performance as Tish’s mother. 10 years ago, it would be easy to blame the Oscars for this, but the Academy’s recent embrace of independent film makes this impossible: if Moonlight won, why couldn’t Beale Street even get nominated?
Because we failed it. Moonlight’s success was built on the fact that it grossed over 60 million dollars on a 1.5 million dollar budget; Beale Street grossed 20 million on a 12 million dollar budget. The film isn’t lacking in critical appraisal; it’s lacking in grassroots support, offering Green Book just the vacuum it needed to steal the show.
What about the next year? Not a single movie focused on race was nominated for Best Picture at the 2020 awards, and this, again, was not for lack of options. Trey Edward Shults’s Waves is a masterclass in how to investigate questions of race, gender, family, and tragedy in a single cinematic experience, and audiences thanked it with a 2 million dollar box office gross — almost certainly less than the film’s budget.
In today’s market, independent films can easily compete with big-budget offerings in terms of theatrical presence: just ask Lady Bird’s 80 million dollar gross if you don’t believe me. The indie films that have reached the mainstream cultural consciousness in the last few years have only done so after a groundswell of support from hardcore moviegoers.
There’s no point bemoaning the fact that people don’t always go and see the best movies; it’s just something that’s bound to happen. What I want to suggest is that the more serious cinephiles among us try to be better moviegoers, actively support and patronize the work of the auteurs who are promoting the most crucial experiments in film today. If we don’t, I’m increasingly afraid that no one will.
