Screen Notes - Zola; A Quiet Place Part II; Summer of Soul

Zola dir Janicza Bravo

Janicza Bravo's previous feature Lemon--a writing collaboration with her partner at the time, Brett Gelman--showed some unique visual and satirical style, but her new feature Zola (though completed in 2018) is a much greater triumph, and one of the best pictures of the year, so far. Here Bravo collaborates with one of her former theatre school mates, Jeremy O. Harris (author of Slave Play), to adapt a notorious twitter thread by A'Ziah King. Taylour Paige is nothing short of revelation in the titular role of Zola. Paige gives an unwavering and complex performance that shows her and Bravo's keen understanding of the theatrical nature of social media; the elaborate performances taking place on the twitter and instagram stages of the character's lives, within the rapidly ensnaring narrative, and the culture at large. This is all amplified not only by the extra patina of the 16mm format, but by the amazing (stunt?) casting of Riley Keogh as "Stefani," a girl with an absurdly thick "black-cent" pushed to a near-grotesque level (Keogh is the granddaughter of. "the King" of black cultural appropriation himself, Elvis Presley). Zola is layered with resonant reflections of race, power, sexuality, sex work, and American identity, but what makes it so powerful is that it isn't concerned in telling you how to feel about any of it. Unfortunately, it might be an inability to deal with the film's ambiguity that will turn audiences off to the film. One aspect that I've already seen the film criticized for is the lack of "an ending," which I read as calling out the filmmakers for not turning Zola into an pointed lesson on it's various themes. No, Zola doesn't manufacture a moralizing confrontation between it's leads as a finale, but opts for something much richer, unforced, and honest. To suggest that the movie has "no ending" is a reading that insults the intelligence and fine tuning of a narrative whose authors knew exactly how much story they wanted to tell and exactly where they wanted to leave the viewer. You can't pat yourself on the back on the way out of the theatre for "getting the message" of Zola, but you can easily imagine a lesser adaptation of this story with that goal. 

A Quiet Place Part II dir John Krazinski

I think I liked A Quiet Place Part II better than it's predecessor, but can't escape the overall feeling that it would have been better off as a sci-fi/horror TV show or limited series. There's a lot to admire about the suspense and overall storytelling. The likes of Christopher Nolan could take a note on what emerges here out of the necessity of minimal dialogue (that is...less dialogue). In particular, the cross-cut sequence between three separate journeys mid-film is spectacularly effective. I also bought the climax entirely, although in retrospect it's pretty predictable. Perhaps because of the long stretches of silence, I occasionally fell into daydreaming one-liners for the characters that would be more fitting to a cheap, exploitation version of this type of genre picture ("batter up!" the kid might say to the alien, or maybe the girl shouts something like "that's my jam!" when she cranks up her hearing-aid defense), but it's to Kranzinki's credit that he plays this all at a more heightened dramatic pitch. In the end, it's disappointing that it's just another chapter, rather than a great stand-alone movie.

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) dir Questlove

Questlove's Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is the documentary event of the year, chronicling the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, and the impact of it's erasure. Often dubbed "the Black Woodstock," this footage, the doc states in one of the opening title cards, unbelievably sat untouched for 50 years. Summer of Soul is more than a documentary of concert performances, and perhaps the only criticism there is to make is that there isn't more music. This is less a criticism than a compliment, because the film inspires one to want to watch every second of this event (and hopefully much of that will be included on an upcoming dvd release). I would imagine there are a million and one options in putting something like this together, and you can feel the weight of each choice as the film progresses. Make no mistake--what is there is gold to begin with: Stevie Wonder killing it on the drums in the opening number, Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson trading vocal runs, Sly and the Family Stone rocking hard, and the incomparable Nina Simone "not about to be non-violent," as usual. But the choices to weave into the performances a combination of attendee and performer reactions, lessons on Harlem culture and history, black commentary on the moon landing (which occurred during a festival performance), are all brilliantly realized and in perfect balance. Essential and emotional filmmaking history finally exposed to the light. Amen!