In 1989, Krzysztof Kieslowski made Decalogue, a 10-part anthology of short films for Polish television, loosely based on the Ten Commandments and all set in the same Warsaw apartment complex. In 2020, Steve McQueen gave us Small Axe, a five-film BBC anthology set amidst London’s Caribbean community–and largely set in the 1980s. In addition to the ’80s setting, Small Axe also shares Decalogue‘s scope, moral conviction, and awesome artistry. It’s intimate yet expansive, episodic yet cinematic. If Kieslowski’s Decalogue is considered a pinnacle of the art form, McQueen’s Small Axe deserves nothing less.
Mangrove
The first installment in writer-director Steve McQueen’s five-film, Small Axe anthology, Mangrove begins by documenting the barrage of police brutality against London’s Caribbean community in the 1960s—a barrage albeit lightened by punctuations of communal joy and island music. Then, in its second half, the film settles into a courtroom drama recreating the trial of the “Mangrove Nine”: a group of protestors, all loosely affiliated with the Mangrove restaurant, who were arrested for inciting a riot. The events, as depicted here—of peaceful protestors against the police being attacked by those very police, then falsely accused—echoes, enragingly, what we saw time and again across the United States in the spring and summer of 2020. Across time and (white) spaces, the subjugation of people of color proves relentless. I wish Mangrove hadn’t made the head of the police, Frank Pulley (Sam Spruell), such a hissing villain (it underplays the systemic nature of the injustice at hand), but the other characters are richly envisioned and brought to life with gripping performances. Letitia Wright (Shuri in Black Panther) brings a fierce intelligence to Altheia Jones, a scientist and Black Panther member from Trinidad, and Malachi Kirby gives a sobering sense of conviction to Darcus Howe, another Black Panther member who more than capably represents himself in court. My favorite performance, though—indeed, one of the best of the year—comes from Shaun Parkes as Frank Crichlow, owner of the Mangrove. Frank occasionally loses his cool in the face of the continual police harassment, but he otherwise doesn’t say much (he mostly just wants to run his restaurant). And so Parkes has to work mainly through subtly shifting facial expressions that chart the growing transition within Frank, from annoyance to anger to activism. McQueen (Widows, 12 Years a Slave) honors this by dedicating the film’s climactic moment—the reading of all nine verdicts—to a single take that slowly closes in on Frank’s face. By making Frank the quiet focus of the movie, Mangrove becomes a document of both history and humanity—the story of a man rightly radicalized by the institutions oppressing him.
Lovers Rock
Lovers Rock is a work of freedom. Freedom from narrative, freedom from main characters, freedom from whiteness, freedom from discrimination. It’s about creating a space to dance, flirt, argue, breathe.
This is especially true considering that Lovers Rock is the second installment in Steve McQueen’s five-film anthology, Small Axe, set among London’s Caribbean community. The first chapter, Mangrove, chronicled the police harassment—nearly to the point of unjust imprisonment—of the owner and patrons of a Caribbean restaurant in 1968. If Mangrove showed the desecration of a communal space and spirit, Lovers Rock—which takes place in 1980 over the course of a single London house party—reclaims and celebrates both. Following Mangrove, it feels restorative and jubilant.
It’s also unconventional. Mangrove evolved into a fairly standard courtroom drama; an ensemble piece, but one with clear protagonists. In Lovers Rock, which is written by McQueen and Courttia Newland, we get to know a few characters better than others, but only because McQueen and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner’s roving camera happens to linger on them longer. Indeed, the main character is that camera, the way it observes—in a series of lovely edits—various hands reaching out to elbows and waists, inviting women to the dance floor. Or the way it settles into the midst of the melee with an extended single take when the men take over for a raucous rouser. Or slowly circles the entire room in woozy rhythm with the music, the clasping couples, the weed.
You could also say the main character is the music (the title refers to a slow-groove, romantic subgenre of reggae that emerged in England in the 1970s). Mercury Sound, the DJ group running the party (and slyly shouting their own name throughout), play a few familiar standards from the period, but the movie’s spirit is best captured by “Silly Games,” a piercingly yearning 1979 hit, written by Dennis Bovell and sung by Janet Kay, that we hear in a couple of variations. At one point, late in the party, the DJ turns off the sound during “Silly Games” and the couples continue singing a cappella for nearly 10 minutes. In this instant, Lovers Rock creates a bubble of freedom that nothing can pierce.
That’s not to say Lovers Rock depicts an idyll. There are threats from outside—racial epithets on the street, a passing police cruiser—and within, including a partier who’s revealed to be a predator. But these are used as potent counterpoints—reminders of why this party, at its best, is something precious. I’ll remember many of the people we meet—Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn), a church girl seeking her own sort of freedom; Franklyn (Michaeal Ward), who tries to woo her with an amazing, geometric-patterned shirt that could be its own character; Samson (Kadeem Ramsay), the most spirited of Mercury Sound’s record-spinners. But my favorite might be Clifton (Kedar Williams-Stirling), who scrounges enough change to get into the party by breaking open a nearby phone booth. Finally on the dance floor, he unburdens himself with a whirling, lurching routine that’s beautiful and bombastic. Clifton’s dance is perhaps the movie’s most exuberant expression of freedom, its ecstatic reason for being.
Red, White and Blue
Can change come from within the system? That’s the question at the heart of Red, White and Blue, the third installment in Steve McQueen’s five-film anthology, Small Axe. John Boyega plays Leroy Logan, a son of Jamaican immigrants who joins the London police force in the 1980s hoping to counteract racist policies and practices. (The real Logan worked for the London Metropolitan Police from 1983 to 2013.) In only 80 minutes, Red, White and Blue tries to tackle a lot of Logan’s life (his relationships with his parents, his wife, colleagues, and wayward kids on the beat) and as such can feel a bit scattered. It’s the only Small Axe installment that feels like it might have worked better as its own series. In addition, a few too many scenes explicitly explain via dialogue what we’ve already been shown. (A wordless goodbye between Leroy and his father, as Al Green’s “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” plays on the car radio, might be the movie’s best moment.) But at least Boyega is in almost every scene, giving the somewhat routine proceedings a jolt of magnetic star power (and dancing!). And there are some trenchant observations about policing in general, especially in the context of the American protests against police violence over the summer of 2020. Leroy’s wife (Antonia Thomas) at one point says that another reason he likely wants to become a constable is because it “appeals to your macho, vain sensibility.” If this is how we’ve come to define the job, might that be part of the problem?
Alex Wheatle
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.”
Education
Education continues—and closes—the larger project of Steve McQueen’s five-film Small Axe anthology: to chronicle the political enlightenment (essentially, the education) of particular people within London’s Caribbean community. From the restaurant owner of Mangrove to the frustrated police reformer of Red, White and Blue to the aspiring DJ of Alex Wheatle, these films have focused on characters who come up against the cruel wall of systemic racism in late 20th-century England—and respond with inspired activism. (Lovers Rock, the second installment, offers a comparative oasis, albeit one tempered by harsh reality in its final moments.) Education makes this project literal, focusing on a young boy, Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy), whose difficulty reading gets him sent to a school for the “educationally subnormal,” which is essentially an institutionalized way to ghettoize those from immigrant backgrounds. Sandy is heartbreaking in the lead role, as his face registers surprise, then betrayal at the way the adults in his life—including, at times, his parents—fail him. It’s a rough watch, but ultimately the film finds hope in its title: a supplemental school that’s held on Saturdays and run by volunteer teachers of color. There Kingsley not only learns to read, but also something that will serve him just as well in the years ahead: Black pride.
