Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
(Spoilers Ahead for Both Films and General Content Warning for This Article)
Since the pandemic laid waste to the world we once knew, I’ve more or less been Kubrick staring at my bedroom wall every night waiting for movie theaters to finally open back up. But despite my initial skepticism that any of the new awards season releases coming directly to streaming would underwhelm, I have to say that two movies, in particular, have proven to be, well frankly, awesome. Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah and Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman are two of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.
Judas stars LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya, and follows William O’Neal, an undercover informant for the FBI (Stanfield) as he infiltrates the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, gains the trust of its leader Fred Hampton (Kaluuya), and ultimately assists in his assassination. On the other side, Promising stars Carey Mulligan as Cassandra, who after a tragedy in her past, begins to live a sort of second life, enacting a complex plot of revenge against a very specific set of targets: sexual predators who prey on women.
Both movies have strong stances on the respective issues that they tackle, mainly those of civil rights and systemic racism for Judas and sexual assault and rape culture for Promising, and the thing that struck me most about each of these movies as they approached these themes was how relentlessly they did so. Amongst other movies that have discussed similar topics, these two seemed remarkably fresh amongst even their contemporaries. And perhaps my favorite thing about this new, more aggressive approach was its absolute disregard for a factor that you typically find in other Hollywood productions about challenging topics.
You see, typically bigger budget Hollywood films like to cut the broader, general audience a sort of break in these movies. Rather than letting their films serve as an absolutely scathing analysis of whatever they’re critiquing, more often they’ll insert what at this point is almost a constant trope: “The one good ___.”
Sometimes this means “the one good cop” in a movie about police brutality. Sometimes it means the one good politician in a movie about government corruption. In movies about race, this often takes the form of the oh so beloved “white savior” trope. Whichever form it takes, these movies usually provide one noble exception to whatever group or institution they’re criticizing so the audience can exhale and go “Oh, everything is fine. I would be that guy. He’ll help fix all of this.” And while there are certainly more nuanced exceptions to this generalization, I personally think that more often than not, it does nothing but compromise the message of the movie, and lull the audience into a false sense of security. Because when a movie simultaneously critiques a system, but also shows that there’s a sweet, Jefferson Smith type doing their darndest to help fix it from the inside, the audience gets to think that despite the egregious problems demonstrated throughout the film, the problems either were or are currently being resolved by somebody else. The audience gets to think this big problem is over and they don’t have to do anything. Judas and the Black Messiah and Promising Young Woman deliberately avoid this trope.
Perhaps they have an easier time doing this because they aren’t your typical Oscar bait, fall dramas, and I don’t just mean with their thematic approach. These are both genre films, with Judas acting as a crime thriller/drama, likening itself more to something like Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) than a typical biopic. Promising Young Woman strikes a completely unique tone as a sort of black comedy thriller, with more of a focus on active revenge.
In fact, perhaps my favorite thing about how these movies strike at their specific messages, and how they deliberately ignore the “one good __” trope, is in their casting decisions. Judas and the Black Messiah refuses to show Jesse Plemons’ FBI agent Roy Mitchell as anything other than villainous despite his hollow insistence that he’s “all for civil rights.” However, Promising Young Woman in particular puts a unique twist on its attack on rape culture. Similarly to how Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) critiqued white liberals of today rather than the classic trope of movies about race almost exclusively attacking Southern conservatism of yesteryear, Promising Young Woman elects to target what seems like untouched territory up until now: the “nice guy.” The movie is showing that these guys who say they’re sweet, noble dudes are just as possibly (if not more so) contributing to a system of violence than these men they say they’re different from. The predators in this movie look more like Maxwell Smart than Max Cady. This idea is perfectly encapsulated by the casting decisions. Casting actors like Bo Burnham, Adam Brody and Max Greenfield (classic prototypes of sweet, lovable dudes from properties the audience likes) as real pieces of s**t beautifully reinforces the message of the movie, rather than watering it down by keeping them as a gentlemanly exception. Judas does something similar with its casting of Martin Sheen as J. Edgar Hoover. Here he plays the paradigm of a racist, abusive figure of power ruthlessly enforcing a system of oppression, completely in contrast to perhaps his most famous role as liberal wet dream President Jed Bartlet on The West Wing (Hey no shame, I still wish this dude was emperor of America).
And while these movies offer some instances of redemption or forgiveness for those who have participated in these systems they a) don’t make them the main focus, and b) show that these instances require legitimate remorse, and active participation against oppression rather than simply being a bystander. Because again, it’s the system that is on trial here. In order to show the system being at fault, you can’t constantly be choosing to show how it will sort itself out. These themes culminate in each movie’s respective, tragic final acts. They show the full extent of the violence that these systems can perpetrate very matter of factly because dreadfully, this is how it is for a lot of victims. And while the very end of these movies leave the audience with a very key touch of optimism, I personally was left feeling more of a bitter-sweet catharsis, thinking: “I’m really happy about what I’m seeing, but Jesus Christ! Is all of that what’s necessary for us to get here? Is that what it takes?”
I’m happy that going forward it looks like we’re going to get more movies that not only address social issues in more interesting genres in extremely entertaining ways but also that they’ll be tackling said issues without apologizing for it. I don’t know how many more movies I can take that discuss society’s most serious subject matters with a benign, watered-down stance of “it’s all good, nothing needs to change because even though you personally don’t do anything to help, this fictional sweetheart is out there giving it his all.”
Go see Judas and the Black Messiah and Promising Young Woman. They’re fantastic.
Love,
Eli
;)
