Mangrove (2020), directed by Steve McQueen. This is the first in McQueen’s Small Axe series for British television. It tells the story of the Mangrove 9, a group of Black British citizens on trial at the Old Bailey in 1971. The film reminds me of Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), another court room drama about something that happened in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those were heady times, and both films capture the sense of urgency and passion of those lost years. Both offer close detail to the lives and times in the U.S. and Britain focusing on racial unrest and systemic injustices. Both are timely and important films. 

Lovers Rock (2020), directed by Steve McQueen. The second in the Small Axes series, this film offers an immersion in a house party in 1980s London. Jimmy Stewart once called films “pieces of time,” and a piece of time is what this film offers. Its story, told with music, dance, and minimal dialogue, is the story of people living their lives against a backdrop of exclusion. Although we do follow a few characters and get to know something of their lives, what matters here is the sense of community, a sense of lives that matter. Like any community, this one has its likeable and its unlikeable people. McQueen’s camera slides through the house party as one of the participants. It will take many of its viewers with it. It will also allow some viewers to understand what it means to be excluded, outside the community, like the white young men on the street outside the party house. Like the food being prepared at the beginning of the film, what we see is spicy and inviting and filled with a variety of flavours.

 

Red, White and Blue, and Alex Wheatle (2020), both directed by Steve McQueen. Here are numbers three and four of the 5-part series Small Axe. The first of these, Red, White and Blue, tells the story of Leroy an intelligent young boy from the Jamaican community in London. He excels at school and becomes a forensic scientist with a Ph.D. This job, however, is not fulfilling, and Leroy decides to become a policeman. He is especially motivated after his father is unjustly arrested and beaten by the local constabulary. The film gives us McQueen’s familiar fluid camera that finds awkward and disorienting angles from which to shoot the action. His distinctive camera placements remind us just how skewered the world of the protagonist and his community is. Leroy’s hope is to change the system from within. Important here is Leroy’s education, and education is the focus of this film and the following two films including Alex Wheatle. Alex Wheatle tells the story of a young boy who grows up not knowing his parents. His childhood and youth are spent with foster parents and in an institution; in both, he meets insensitivity and violence. No wonder, then, that he grows up something of an outsider. He finds a mate who introduces him to music, lingo, and fashion. Alex takes to this world fairly easily and finds himself inside another institution: prison. Here he meets an older rasta inmate who teaches him the importance of books and learning. In something of an inversion, prison here proves to be Alex’s salvation, rather than his undoing. The film ends before Alex becomes the successful writer of Young Adult books that he is today. As with Red, White and Blue, Alex Wheatle ends in medias res, as it were. These characters have yet to reach their full potential, their full understanding of themselves and their community.

 

            If you are the big tree

            We are the small axe 

            Sharpened to cut you down

                                    (Bob Marley)

Education (2020), directed by Steve McQueen. This is the fifth and final film in the Small Axe series. It tells the story of Kingsley, a 12-year-old boy who finds himself shunted to a “special school” for the “educationally subnormal.”  True, he does not read well and he sometimes engages in hijinks, but he is definitely not unintelligent. He wants to be an astronaut. He is polite and curious. This film examines an educational system rife with racist attitudes, an educational system in which teachers care little about the welfare of some of their students, especially those students with black or brown skins. McQueen again gives us his distinctive take on life for black citizens in Britain. One long scene gives us a classroom in which students doze while their teacher (a word carrying a load of irony here) plays on the guitar and sings, both rather poorly, “The House of the Rising Sun.” The length of this scene is worthy of Morpheus, allowing the viewer to experience what the students are experiencing. Students in this “special school” look forward to a future without hope of success in any endeavour; although not explicitly stated, the move here for many will be from school, to the dole, to prison. Luckily for Kingsley, a couple of forceful women have organized a community effort to help the children in the supposed school, and by the end of the film we have a ray of hope for Kingsley and others like him. As in the other Small Axe films, the hope that shines, is just a ray, not a full-blown cloudless sky.

 

 Desk Set (1957), directed by Walter Lang. Speaking of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Bosley Crowther remarks, "They can tote phone books on their heads or balance feathers on their chins and be amusing—." And they are amusing in this delightful look at automation in the work force. In this film, four women who run a research department for a large corporation find their jobs threatened by a large piece of hardware known as a computer. I include this film at this time of year because it is a Christmas movie. Well, if Die Hard can be a Christmas movie, then Desk Set can too. The Christmas Party in Desk Set is far more festive than the one in Die Hard. Indeed, the entire sensibility of Desk Set has something festive about it. Even Emmerich the feminine computer has twinkling lights and tinkling sounds. The film was released in 1957 and computers were a tad more cumbersome than the ones we now wear on our wrists or tuck in our shirt pockets, and so the whole computer vs human brain power thing seems rather quaint now. Nevertheless, the principals are likeable, the colours bright, and the wide screen wider than wide. 

Reindeer Games (2000), directed by John Frankenheimer. This director has made some noteworthy films. This is not one of them. Oh, it is okay as a heist movie with twists and turns aplenty. And it has the added fun of having the five robbers dress as Santa Claus. The action takes place in a wintry Michigan at Christmas time, and the soundtrack uses familiar seasonal songs in a wry manner. The whole thing plays out as a sort of grunge version of Ocean’s Eleven. Characters are one-dimensional for all their changes of direction, and the plot, for all its baroque twists, is predictable. The actors are easy on the eyes, and Ben Affleck plays a dopey everyman believably, even if the plot he inhabits is hardly believable. Frankenheimer moves the action efficiently, and the opening shots of dead Santas is catching. All in all, this film is okay, but it will not (and has not) become a holiday classic.

 Some Christmas films:

The Bishop’s Wife (1947), directed by Henry Koster. If you ever wanted to see a Christmas movie in which Cary Grant dazzles with his stunt double’s skating prowess and also plays a mean harp, then this is the film for you. Released a year after Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bishop’s Wife serves up some of the same Christmas optimism, along with an angel who has yet to get his wings. The story argues that human relationships are more important than position and money, while at the same time accepting the Bishop’s wife’s desire for a hat that graces an expensive shop’s window. Apparently consumerism is bad when what one wants is a huge new cathedral, but good when what one wants is a rather ugly hat. Despite what I say here, this film has its delights, not the least of which are the performances by Loretta Young, David Niven, Monte Woolley, James Gleason (who also skates with a sort of aplomb), Elsa Lanchester, and most especially Cary Grant who seems to be enjoying himself more than is fair. This is typical Christmas fun, without the more obvious disparities we see in Capra’s film. The city here may have its poor, but it is no Bedford Falls or Pottersville. Gladys Cooper in the role played by Lionel Barrymore in It’s a Wonderful Life is suitably crusty, but no match for the ruthlessness of Mr. Barrymore.

 

Christmas Eve (1947), directed by Edwin L. Marin. Here’s a sleeper for Christmas, and by sleeper I do not mean a picture to put you to sleep. This is a clever metafilmic movie. Its stories of three brothers nicely encapsulates the major film genres in Hollywood movies at the time: the screwball comedy, the gangster film, and the western. The protagonist of each story is an adopted son of a wealthy philanthropic old lady whose only hope for Christmas is to see her adopted boys again after many years. If the boys do not return, then her fabulous fortune just might go to a nephew, Philip (Reginald Denny), who has designs on the lady’s fortune. She has plans to give much of it away to various causes. Each story is a tall tale: Michael (George Brent) is something of a Lothario who plans to marry for money, but his real love Ann (Joan Blondell) has a different idea. Mario (George Raft) is living in South America because he is on the lam from some trouble in Louisiana. His is a world of nightclubs and tough guys. Then we have Johnathan (Randolph Scott) who is a rodeo rider and all round cowboy, who finds himself adopting three orphaned girls on his way to see his mother on Christmas Eve. I won’t describe how this happens, but needless to say it involves a woman he meets and the two of them undertake a preposterous adventure. Oh, and did I mention that the elderly lady, Aunt Mathilda (Ann Harding) uses an elaborate train set to pass the sugar, cream, and other things at her dinner table. The emphasis on adoption strikes a particularly fine note. Here we have a family that does not have a biological connection, only an emotional one. We found the proceedings quite satisfying, and most suitable for Christmas. 

 

White Christmas (1954), directed by the dependable Michael Curtiz. No snow in Vermont and it is Christmas time. No matter, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye can spark things up and bring people to this snowless ski resort, and besides, snow starts falling on Christmas Eve. This is a patriotic celebration of Christmas with a variety of musical numbers. It begins and ends with a reminder of the recent war. Memorable is Danny Kaye in purple leotard with similarly clad group of dancers parodying modern dance. Danny Kaye is especially clever and kind in bringing his comic repertoire to this film; he does not steal scenes although he comes close to doing so. And then we have Vera-Ellen of the slim legs (yes, sad to say she did struggle with anorexia) dancing up a storm. She is flexible, graceful, and pixyish. Rosemary Clooney and Bing sing pleasantly. The plot is simple, predictable, and certainly well-timed for the holiday season. Everything is staged carefully. And the film reminds me, snow is coming!