This 40-year old film has never felt more timely.
I saw this when it first came out and it felt very true to the experience
I was seeing in New York City at the time. A lot of scenes and moments were
right on the button. One funny bit really hit home with me. A white man tells
the black man sitting next to him on the uptown subway that he has been doing
card tricks for, "Here is another magic trick for you. You want to see all
the white people disappear?" Next stop 125th street. Every person in the
city got that joke. The express train jumps from the white world to Harlem.
An invisible line that everyone was aware of. Back then not many white people
went to Harlem. Once after I had just moved to NYC, I was visiting a friend
who lived on 96th street and being new to NYC I took the wrong train - uptown
instead of downtown and the next thing I knew I was at the 125th St Station
at about midnight. And sure enough, I was mugged by four guys - till the
toll booth guy came out with a club and they scattered. So ya, that joke
felt very real. I still think about that toll booth guy at times and thank
him in my mind.
This was written and directed by John Sayles
early on in his career, when he was still doing low-budget independent films.
He is white writing about the black experience. And to my white ears it sounds
authentic. I was thinking while watching that he was clearly influenced in
certain scenes with dialogue by early Spike Lee - but this came out a few
years before Lee's first film. Could a white man write a film today that
is so immersed in black culture - some positive, some negative - or would
he be accused of cultural appropriation? In any case, it is a brilliant funny
clever warm film for most of the running time - though the abrupt drug seller
sub-plot near the end felt very unnecessary and broke the lovely rhythm and
mood of the film.
The Brother played by Joe Morton is an escaped
slave from another planet who crash lands in NYC's harbor near Ellis Island
and in view of the Statue of Liberty. He has lost a foot, but it soon
grows back. He has other alien powers - he can hear memories from inert objects,
he can heal others, he can fix anything electronic by touch, he can pluck
out his eyeball and leave it somewhere to record events - but he can't speak.
Morton never utters a word in the film, but his facial expressions and physical
movement is brilliant. He quickly understands everything - that he escaped
slavery but that blacks in this world are being suppressed as well. He spends
a lot of time just hanging out in a black Cheers like bar with a few barflies
- and their conversations among themselves are marvelous as they try to figure
out where he is from. He points up - making them think he means the Bronx.
Adding to the relevance today are the two
alien slave hunters played by Sayles and David Strathairn as if they are
uncomfortable in their skin and still trying to learn how to act human. Basically,
ICE agents. I will get a bit political here - but I hate ICE and I
hate what they are doing to basically good people. Whenever I come across
a MAGA person online saying something like "It's the law", I reply so was
turning in escaped slaves in America. Would you have done that? Or ratted
out Anne Frank. Then I never hear from them again. Ok - political rant over
but what a cruel country we have become. This is a wonderful small film -
the Twin Towers in the skyline made me choke up - I miss NYC at times. One
woman when questioned by ICE says to them, "You know what my opinion is?
You people just made up this immigration scam to keep people under your thumb".
Exactly.
