Reggae music is a through line in almost all five installments of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, but in Alex Wheatle, it’s a lifeline.
Based on the life of the titular novelist, who was born in England to Jamaican parents and found literary success after surviving the abusive foster system and a stint in prison, the movie pulses with the loping bass lines and political proclamations of Eek-A-Mouse, Sugar Minott, Bob Marley, and others. Reggae gives Alex (played by Sheyi Cole as an adult) both a cultural identity and a bodily freedom; bopping to its rhythms—especially as a singer in the DJ group he forms while living in a hostel—he’s at once lost and found.
One of the film’s bravura moments takes place in a reggae record store. Fresh out of the foster system and new to the hostel’s Caribbean neighborhood, Alex wanders wide-eyed into the establishment. McQueen’s camera follows his gaze in a slow, circular motion, taking in the dreadheaded denizens. Just before it comes back around to Alex, the camera stutters into regular speed and finds him as he appears six months later: confident in a new hat and jacket, wearing the comfortable smile of a regular.
There’s another masterful, transitional moment earlier in the film, as a teen Alex is being dragged by abusive teachers from a classroom. Suddenly, we get a quick cut to a shot of an older, imprisoned Alex being lugged—in the same direction across the screen—by two prison guards while straitjacketed. They throw him to the ground in a large empty room, where he lies motionless. The camera ever-so-slowly zooms in, following a shaft of light on the floor, eventually reaching his face. Seeing nothing there, it tragically pulls away again.
That shot may look away, but the movie as a whole doesn’t. Alex, who in real life was imprisoned in connection with the 1981 Brixton uprising against police brutality, lands in a cell with a towering Rastafarian named Simeon (Robbie Gee). After an early confrontation, Simeon restrains Alex and demands: “What is your story?” Eventually Alex softens, and shares his tale, noting at one point what much of Small Axe has emphasized: “For me, it was all about the music.”
