Steve McQueen’s "Mangrove," the first film in his Small Axe series, is a masterful convergence of Black sorrow and jubilation that traces West Indian identities in Notting Hill, London. His dedication to every single quotidian aspect of Frank Crichlow’s hard work as a Black restaurant owner makes it a sensational narrative of underhanded emotional devastation: In one scene, Frank says, “The Mangrove is a restaurant. It serves West Indian cuisine to people who eat that kinda food. Just like any other restaurant. Greek, French, English for that matter. We the Mangrove. We pay we taxes; we pay we bills, and we pay we staff. You gonna try arrest me for that, or what?” Concerned with the feelings of people who exist and continue to exist and rebel under state violence, McQueen evades cheap projections of hopeful, idealized Black protagonists and imbues his film with a breathtaking honesty that stirs the soul.
"Mangrove" illustrates a vast spectrum of contemporary imagery that reflects civil rights movements not only in Britain but also in the United States, from the passionate chants of “Hands off black people. Hands off black people” during the street protest to the courtroom scenes with snooty, oppressive police officers and legal authorities. I especially enjoyed the cleverly written courtroom dialogue when Darcus Howe says,
“Royce, 13 times you say you don’t remember or you can’t say. PC Pulley said 33 times that he didn’t remember. PC Johnson, 28 times. About 70 times the 3 of you say you can’t remember. You were put in the van to observe and record, from beginning to end, in order to provide information that would give the truth as to what took place. This consistent lack of memory hinders the process of getting at the truth. I suggest you failed distinctly in your responsibility to observe and record. Let me ask you again, where was your face, PC Royce? Where was your face?”
Darcus’s cross-examination of the white police officers suspends viewers in a swelling, emotional investigation of racist regimes that functions as a reflexive testament to McQueen’s profound ability to unveil, scrutinize, and reclaim the dominant white London media’s representational modes and strategies. In “How Long, Not Long: A Take on Black Joy,” Rebecca Wanzo ascertains that “This is carnal cinema, in which taking pleasure in black embodiment is the central focus of the film” (53). McQueen pays great attention to emphasizing Crichlow, Barbara Beese, Altheia Jones (my favorite character), Darcus Howe, Rupert Boyce, Rhodan Gordon, Anthony Innis, Rothwell Kentish, and Godfrey Millett’s simultaneous bodily vulnerability and strength, and thus, offers multiplicity, range, and diversity in polarizing representations of West Indian individuals.
In the second film of his Small Axe series, "Lovers Rock," McQueen interrogates cinema’s illusionistic procedures and purposes and the escapism it provides while synchronously paying homage to its humanistic power in actualizing and foregrounding the beauty of Black virtuosity and possibility. Most prominently, he injects the film with an abundance of gentle musical interludes and choreography that is absent of dialogue. In the dance scenes, McQueen scoffs at the so-called moralism and professionalism of white cinema. By contesting the arrested and fixed images that vilify the West Indian diaspora with Martha and Patty’s tender dance sequences in "Lovers Rock," McQueen references Oscar Micheaux’s typical scenes of nightlife and his prominent, pivotal dance numbers on the club floor in his movies. And so, amidst the alcohol and debauchery, with a fiercely oppositional gaze, both Micheaux and McQueen envision life reconstructed along radically different lines and celebrate Black temperance, aura, sophistication, and romance in manners that challenge traditional white cinema.
Further, Wanzo notes that while slave narratives would avoid graphic details about sexual violence, McQueen presents a horrific extended rape scene to “strike a balance between black suffering and black optimism in the series” (55). With this, McQueen highlights that Black experiences are not parallel lines of delight and pain. Rather, they are inevitable intersections. The threat of prejudice and sexual violence lingers on the borders of the house party—Cynthia is sexually assaulted—and mirrors the notions of inside-outside binaries in Emezi’s novel, The Death of Vivek Oji. Challenging straightforward portrayals of respective Nigerian and Caribbean communities, both Emezi and McQueen delineate intrusions on spaces and intercommunal conflicts in a charmingly lackadaisical flow that accentuates realism and rejects cliches.
Works Cited
“Lovers Rock.” Small Axe. Written and directed by Steve McQueen, Criterion Collection, 2020.
“Mangrove.” Small Axe. Written and directed by Steve McQueen, Criterion Collection, 2020.
Wanzo, Rebecca. “How Long, Not Long: A Take on Black Joy.” Film Quarterly, vol. 74, no. 4, 2021, pp. 51–55, https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2021.74.4.51.
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