1177 Small Axe

[DarkImbecile]

Small Axe — Five Films by Steve McQueen



With the five films that make up his Small Axe anthology, director Steve McQueen offers a richly evocative panorama of West Indian life in London from the 1960s through the ’80s—a time defined for the community by the terror of police violence, the empowering awakening of political consciousness, and the ecstatic escape of a vibrant reggae scene. Ranging in tone from the tenderly impressionistic to the devastatingly clear-eyed, these powerfully performed portraits of Black resistance, joy, creativity, and collective action—all sumptuously shot by Shabier Kirchner—form a revolutionary counterhistory of mid-twentieth-century Britain at a transformational moment.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New high-definition masters of all five films, approved by director Steve McQueen, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
• New conversation between McQueen and writer and professor Paul Gilroy
• Behind-the-scenes featurettes including interviews with McQueen, executive producer Tracey Scoffield, writing consultant Alex Wheatle, and members of the Small Axe cast
• Uprising (2021), a three-part documentary codirected by McQueen and James Rogan about the tragic 1981 New Cross house fire
• Audio conversation among McQueen, music producer Dennis Bovell, and Beastie Boys member Mike D
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Ashley Clark

Mangrove


Steve McQueen’s multistrand anthology of West Indian immigrant life in London opens in the late 1960s with this stirring ensemble film. In a Caribbean restaurant, a group of Black activists, intellectuals, and ordinary people converge and unite in struggle against incessant police harassment, leading to an explosive showdown on the streets and a courtroom drama that challenges the racist power structures of British society. Based on real events, this is a passionate vision of community as a form of resistance, performed by a dynamic cast (led by Shaun Parkes, Letitia Wright, and Malachi Kirby) and bolstered by McQueen’s eye for vivid sensory detail.

Lovers Rock


Suffused with the intoxicating sounds of reggae, dub, and lovers rock, the second installment in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series unfolds over the course of one rapturous night into dawn in early-1980s West London, as a young woman (the luminous Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) sneaks out to attend a house party. As the alternately languorous and ecstatic rhythms pulse from a homemade sound system, romance sparks on the dance floor, small human dramas play out, and, for a moment, this gathering is a safe haven from the outside world. Aided by the sensuous cinematography of Shabier Kirchner, McQueen captures an exhilarating expression of Black joy in a society often intent on stifling it.

Red, White and Blue


Both a hard-hitting indictment of structural injustice and a penetrating portrait of a complex man, Red, White and Blue boasts a passionate, multilayered performance from John Boyega as Leroy Logan, a Black research scientist whose decision to join the notoriously racist London police force, in hopes of reforming it from the inside, brings him into conflict with his family, community, and very sense of self. Based on a true story, this nuanced exploration of Margaret Thatcher–era racial tensions powerfully portrays the psychic struggle of a lone man going up against a system designed to crush him.

Alex Wheatle


An intimate account of a decisive moment in British history unfolds via the true story of one man’s awakening Black consciousness. Raised in cold, oppressive children’s homes that have left him estranged from his West Indian roots, the eponymous orphan Alex Wheatle (Sheyi Cole) gradually finds his voice as an artist, activist, and writer on the streets of Brixton—a transformation that intersects with the 1981 uprising in which the neighborhood’s mainly Black youth erupt in protest against police violence. Interwoven with the vibrant reggae that inspired its subject’s journey, Alex Wheatle crackles with the heady political and cultural energy of a singular time and place.

Education


A Black boy’s journey through an ineffectual public school system reveals the racial inequities built into everyday British life. Young Kingsley Smith (Kenyah Sandy) is a spirited aspiring astronaut with a love of drawing whose life is turned upside down when he is thrust into a new school for the “educationally subnormal”—a harrowing experience that gradually awakens his mother (Sharlene Whyte) to the institutional mistreatment of the children of West Indian immigrants. Shot on Super 16 mm to evoke BBC television dramas from the 1970s, the final Small Axe film concludes the pentalogy with a hopeful vision of the power of Black-led collective action.

[hearthesilence]

I've watched two of Steve McQueen's Small Axe films so far, going in order of shortest to longest (though only four of the five have been released) and it'll take some convincing to continue with the others. Alex Wheatle was a completely uninteresting biopic, that takes a good approach in theory to the largely-boring dramatic subgenre by showing a portion of the man's life in a brief time, barely pushing the one-hour mark. Unfortunately, instead of taking that small window as an opportunity to really whittle down the biopic trappings to some pulsing drama, McQueen crafts a well-made but totally empty slice of life. I was worried that Lovers Rock would be similarly vapid, but at around the halfway mark I found myself utterly consumed by the atmosphere put forth. The camera drifting around the room of dancing, peering in at various characters coming in and out of the narrative and then returning to the groove, that its rhythm devolves into the hypnotic daze of culture mirroring as the marijuana smoke physically populating the space. This seems to be the favorite of the bunch so far, but if anyone sees the others and puts in a good word, I'll give them a shot.

I'm finally catching up with Small Axe as MoMA is now streaming all five episodes (though the first three will expire soon).

The prospect of watching any episodic show wears me down. Some like Richard Brody have argued that these are really a handful of features rather than an episodic series, so it was tempting to see only Lovers Rock or at least see it first. But I decided to watch this in the proper order simply because this is how the series was ultimately chosen to be shown, and some thought must have gone into that decision.

I just finished the third, and so far the result is greater than the sum total of its parts. Lovers Rock is a standout - as a standalone feature, it probably would play much better than the other two, but it also gains something in the proper context.

The first episode, Mangrove, is basically the mission statement, and that felt like a burden on the episode as it moved along. It's much longer than the other films - over two hours whereas the rest are well under 90 minutes with some getting close to an hour. That's not a mundane detail, it's a reflection of how much more is packed into the film, and it's a dense two hours. Based on a real-life, landmark incident, it's written as a detailed and accurate procedural while expressing its ideas in the clearest, most direct way possible. It was engaging, but it left me wondering if it was setting a tone that was too didactic for the series to be much more than a political statement (that is, it wouldn't play out as great art or a greater dramatization of sociopolitical ideas rather than preaching a cause).

As expected based on word-of-mouth, Lovers Rock was a departure, but seen right after Mangrove it carries a charge from the start. The setting may be about a decade later, but it gained quite a bit of power after seeing more or less the same community struggling to live happily and freely in Mangrove. It felt like a community that had taken back its life while keeping a wary eye on the same prejudice-fueled threats that continued to surround them.

Now with Red, White and Blue (early '80s, probably a few years later?), the series' momentum continues to build. The filmmaking and storytelling here is more potent yet relaxed, particularly with the great, effortless set pieces that suggest the great genre filmmaker McQueen could be. (This probably comes as no surprise to anyone who's a great fan of Widows - I still haven't seen it myself.) More importantly, it builds off the prior two films (particularly Mangrove) rather than just our knowledge or experiences for context. At this point, I get the impression that Mangrove is by design a platform for the entire series - more than establishing the ideas, it could be supporting the weight of everything that will unfold.

FWIW, Red, White and Blue is also based on a true story, a remarkable one. However, while Mangrove seemed obligated to go through all the details (understandably ending with title cards that detail the aftermath), Red, White and Blue doesn't take that approach, even when there's a well-earned happy ending to the real-life story. The focus is on the obstacles and the struggle, and it ends with a simple chat/drink between two people that felt beautiful. I found out that they wrapped production on Red, White and Blue around the same time nationwide protests over George Floyd's death began to emerge. It's a stunning example of another work of popular art mirroring the zeitgeist as it unfolds - it's also the sad truth that doing so with this subject matter has become so frequent because the same damn problem has been happening over and over. But I think Red, White and Blue stands out because it's the one that offers the most hope. As its real-life subject mentioned this past year, it feels like we've slid back twenty years. It's demoralizing. But the film reminds us how it was like before any successful effort at reform, and it emphasizes how daunting it seemed. That's where it more or less ends, and knowing what became of Leroy Logan and what he goes on to accomplish gives everyone a great, genuine reason to hope.

[hearthesilence]

I forgot to mention, one thing the Small Axe series has done is deepen my appreciation for Jamaican music, as well as that of the Clash and hip-hop (specifically the beginnings of hip-hop). I was already an enormous fan with a general understanding of the history and context of those records, but while I was aware of the connections between each, the series does flesh them out in a way that makes them even more resonant and logical. To be clear, the Clash isn't heard once, and hip-hop makes a brief but prominent appearance via "White Lines (Don't Do It)" in Red, White and Blue during Logan's first time on patrol as a police officer. But in its own way, the show gets across the place and impact each have in their respective communities very astutely and organically without seeming academic. After Duke Bootee's recent death, I was listening to a lot of hip-hop from the early '80s, and it was often noted that the toasting that goes on in Jamaican music (see Lovers Rock) eventually morphed into the beginnings of rapping through Jamaican immigrants in the Bronx. Duke Bootee's "The Message" was hailed in his obituaries as a quantum leap, bringing social awareness and political commentary into a new kind of music that had been mostly apolitical party music, but given the political heft of Jamaican music and it's place in the immigrant communities we see in London, that eventual development in hip-hop feels more organic and inevitable as they feel more like parallel cultures. The Clash came to mind because it's the most prominent example you can find of a popular English band tapping into the West Indian diaspora in London, ignoring social barriers and doing so as a means of connecting with other cultures rather than co-opting it. It now seems more appropriate that they'd take to hip-hop when they were introduced to it in NY.

(On another note, Lovers Rock has deepened my appreciation for dub records. As a Midwesterner listening to records in the middle of nowhere, it was tough to hear more than their face value as long instrumentals, not unlike listening to incomplete backing tracks. But records - or rather musical cultures - really flourish in clubs and on dance floors. It's always been an extension of social activity, and if you've never been to a club, you can still walk away from Lovers Rock understanding how vital and essential dub records were in expanding Jamaican music.)

I bring all this up because Alex Wheatle emphasizes Jamaican music to great effect. I didn't find the film disappointing at all. Again, it may have helped that I viewed it after the first three films because it does continue the momentum built up in those other films, drawing on what we've seen and echoing and developing many of the same ideas. (Once again, The Black Jacobins is mentioned as vital educational, and this time there's a better understanding of why. Previously, it was a humorous reference - a book that was too advanced for the children that were mentioned. Without nailing it on the head very hard, it's organically presented to a young man who we've seen grow from childhood over the course of an hour.)

And the series actually returns to children's education for the very last film (appropriately titled Education). The only visual element that really stands out is the look of grainy vintage film. Otherwise, the overall approach was pretty conventional and very straightforward, but it was still effective and very edifying, especially when public education has been kind of a blind spot for me. With no children of my own (i.e. no personal stake in that area), I've never been able to get past the overwhelming and daunting nature of its problems to have any real understanding of them, much less a good opinion on how to address them. Witnessing Kingsley's struggles with illiteracy was indeed overwhelming and daunting - it sank in that I wasn't aware of anyone I knew personally who was illiterate, at least during the time I've known them, so the painful struggle with the simple act of reading came across as both abstract and demoralizing. Given a variety of factors like Kingsley's age, his original school, how articulate he otherwise seemed to be and how well his sister was doing in school, I had a tough time grasping how that was possible. For a long stretch, I thought the problem lay solely in the failure of his new school, which wasn't going to help him, but then the film slapped me in the back of head, pointing out that I actually looked past the real problem even though it was right there in front of me - literally spelling it out, an illiterate grandfather points out that he's never spent a day in school, yet how is he seeing illiterate children who have completed 12 years of it? Rather than educating those who need it most, too many were being consigned to oblivion, and now they were doing it under the false pretense of giving them a "special" education.

Anyway, I had expected the series to end with something larger and even more ambitious, but rather than following the usual convention of ending a series in a big way, this seemed relatively low-key. There wasn't a complete sense of closure to the series, and that's probably the point. These films are all dealing with ongoing concerns. There can't be a sense of closure - if there were, these real-life events wouldn't seem so relevant decades later. And the subject of the final installment kind of underlines the real intent of the series - if you want to move things forward and break down cultural isolation, you're ultimately trying to educate the public.

[swo17]

Apr 25

[MichaelB]

The first episode, Mangrove, is basically the mission statement, and that felt like a burden on the episode as it moved along. It's much longer than the other films - over two hours whereas the rest are well under 90 minutes with some getting close to an hour. That's not a mundane detail, it's a reflection of how much more is packed into the film, and it's a dense two hours. Based on a real-life, landmark incident, it's written as a detailed and accurate procedural while expressing its ideas in the clearest, most direct way possible. It was engaging, but it left me wondering if it was setting a tone that was too didactic for the series to be much more than a political statement (that is, it wouldn't play out as great art or a greater dramatization of sociopolitical ideas rather than preaching a cause).

I suspect you have to be British (or at least to have lived in Britain for many years) to fully appreciate this, but a major achievement of Mangrove is that for people of my age and younger - i.e. alive but far too young to have been conscious of what was going on at the time - it absolutely transformed Darcus Howe's reputation from the near-ubiquitous, rather belligerent pundit who was all over the airwaves in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s (he died in 2017) to the hugely important historical figure that he unquestionably also was. To my shame, I simply didn't know anything about his distinguished past - I just thought that he was one of those rentagobs-for-hire (i.e. in a similar bracket to the infinitely less distinguished Toby Young), whom TV and radio producers loved because he could always be relied upon to have a shouty bust-up with a fellow guest, thus upping the entertainment factor.

Oh, and given that some people have been complaining elsewhere about the paucity of extras, I thought it was worth mentioning that Uprising runs only a couple of minutes short of three hours and is in fact the longest item in this set by some distance.

[FrauBlucher]

Beaver

[What A Disgrace]

No obvious title joke? For shame.

[FrauBlucher]

obvious

Exactly. And weak.

[cdnchris]

So it turns out they did license this from BBC Studios, not Amazon. Wonder if it's a one-off or more than that.

[zedz]

I worked through this set over the weekend and it was a great watch. All of the component films are strong on their own merits, but they gain a lot from the context of the others (and of McQueen's excellent documentary Uprising).

Viewing order is an interesting question, but I'd endorse the official order, as Mangrove is essential as the starting point, as it lays out the history that underpins all the later-set subsequent films, and Education has an ending that's clearly designed to work as a capper to the whole series.

If you're not familiar with the New Cross Massacre and the Brixton Uprising, I'd suggest watching Uprising between Mangrove and the other four Small Axe films, as those contain frequent allusions to the wider historic context that the documentary fills in, and in one particular case pre-knowledge completely changes the way the film plays:

SpoilerShow

All through Lovers Rock I was on the edge of my seat, primed for an apocalyptic conclusion that didn't come. The anti-climax is pointed, crucial and giddily cathartic.