Bigelow explores a horrific history

There is no nice or pretty way to tell a story about the systemic oppression and mistreatment of black people in the United States. It’s fitting then that Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit, an account of the murders of three unarmed black men that took place in the Algiers Motel in late July 1967, is an all-out assault on your senses and soul.

It’s hard to overstate just how visceral and harrowing an experience it is.

Detroit is a well-made and evocative film that is also numbingly brutal with little to no reprieve. And while it might be the only true way to tell this story, it’s also one that is not going to be for everyone.

To set the stage for the Algiers Motel, Bigelow begins by speeding through the history of black people in the US with animated acrylics and pounding music emancipation, the great migration, white flight and the racist zoning practices that led to the overcrowding of black residents in urban pockets. Tensions have already reached a tipping point, and then in the summer of 1967, Detroit police bust an after-hours club in what would become the inciting incident for the riots.

Three days after the riots begin, a local singing group called The Dramatics are about to go on stage at a big, crowded theater hoping to get their big break but are interrupted and sent home due to the events outside.