Small Axe - Season 1 Episode 1: Mangrove (2020)

Genre bending 'series' that's essentially five, mostly feature length, 'episodes' all directed by Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave.)

This is the first Steve McQueen movie that I've seen. A good friend recommended that I watch 12 Years a Slave and I've been longing to watch Shame after learning that it was so highly regarded by Roger Ebert and others. McQueen has made primarily short films, though his few feature length works have always received high praise. I'm always skeptical about the opinions of others but this is a truly remarkable film. It's visually stunning, using incredible camera work, staging, and acting to engage the emotional gravity of each character's struggle, both collective and individual aspects of this true story.

It's perhaps the finest example of emotionally riveting drama intrinsically tied to radical theories of struggle and resistance to oppression. The movie is an interpretation of real events around the harassment of a restaurant, the Mangrove, that was an important gathering place and symbol to the community of people from the East Indies that lived in the Notting Hill area of London in the late 60s to early 70s. The visually elegant way that this movie depicts the fun and good nature of the proprietors of the Mangrove is lovely to watch. The villainy of the racist police and courts is rightly highlighted in stark contrast to the joy and comradery expressed by the people of color in Notting Hill.

I loved that they were explicit about the presence and importance of the Black Panther Party/Black self-determination and defense movement to this court case. There was a strong through line about the crucial role of radical political theory. These ideas and values enabled the struggle against white-supremacist actors that had been limiting the lives of people of color on behalf of the wider oppressive cultural norms. This movie did a simply wonderful job of demonstrating connection between theory and profoundly human concerns that we all face on a day to day basis.

It's so rare that the organizers of political change would be shown as the heroes of a movie. This fact alone felt delightful to watch. But the story is more important than that; the organizers used tact, grit, and guile to shine a light on the mechanisms of racist oppression that are built into this extraordinary yet all too ordinary trial. The members of the Mangrove Nine and their representatives educated themselves in court practices and turned the case upside down, putting institutional racism on trial.

Even until the end you could not tell what the verdict of the jury would be. The build up to the finale demonstrated the absurd level of shit the police and courts would get away with. Yet the film was rife with examples of the obviously legitimate claims of police brutality and persecution of even this very small, nascent, institution of Black community power.

Very much looking forward to watching the rest of the movies in this series!