MOVIES HARSH REALITY
‘UNDERGROUND RAILROAD’ A CHALLENGING, REWARDING WATCH
Combine one of the greatest novels of the 21st century with one of the greatest directors working today and what do you get? ● “The Underground Railroad,” Barry Jenkins’ realization of Colson Whitehead’s novel, a limited series that is, well, great. ● But not perfect. Even a filmmaker as gifted as Jenkins falls prey to the temptations of the lack of limits prestige cable offers. The 10-episode series, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, easily could have been trimmed. But the narrative gets away from Jenkins a little, especially in the middle when the focus shifts away from the enslaved woman trying to escape to the man trying to catch her. It’s needed to tell the story, but goes too far down that path.
And yes, “filmmaker” is the word. Take the argument over what’s a movie and what’s TV elsewhere. Jenkins could make a TikTok video Oscar-worthy. Jenkins confidently quotes visually from films like “The Searchers,” but creates something original. This is a cinematic tour de force no matter what you call it.
And again, despite a few shortcomings, I call it great — a searing indictment of racism and inhumane behavior that remains relevant.
Jenkins won’t let viewers turn away from slavery’s horrors
It is also difficult and challenging and, because of that, ultimately rewarding. In Whitehead’s novel, the underground railroad of the title is not just the name given to the network that helped enslaved people escape to the north. In Whitehead’s telling, and in Jenkins’, it is a literal railroad underground.
Thus the story occupies a slightly alternate reality, which opens up all kinds of narrative possibilities. It follows Cora (Thuso Mbedu) on her journey to what she hopes will become freedom. It is a harrowing trip, where anything that seems too good to be true almost certainly is. And the things that don’t seem all that good are worse.
At the beginning of the series, Cora is enslaved on a plantation in Georgia. Her mother Mabel (Sheila Atim) escaped years before. Caesar (Aaron Pierre), also enslaved, wants Cora to run away with him. It’s easy to see why. Everyday life on the plantation is a horror show, one on which Jenkins lingers. It never feels like exploitation. It feels like a harsh reality that Jenkins will not allow us to turn away from.
At times, you want to. One escapee is found and returned to a plantation and burned alive, as the plantation owner dances with his wife. Not only does Jenkins show all this, at times he shows it from the point of view of the man being burned. Too much? Maybe, but Jenkins is both a sympathetic filmmaker and an empathetic one.
Cora and Caesar run off in the night and make their way to a stop on the railroad. They disembark in South Carolina, where they are treated as free. Or so it seems. The smiles that greet them are a little too eager; there’s an undercurrent of ugliness and menace. Soon it will
How to watch ‘The Underground Railroad’ Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
bubble up to the surface.
Cora makes her way to North Carolina, where white Christians have made the situation more dire, and deadly, outlawing Black people entirely. How do they enforce this? If you’re Black, you’re killed, simple as that — and there is a mile-long road adorned with trees, the bodies of Black men and women hanging from them, that serves as a horrific warning to anyone who dares test the resolve of the racists who live there.
The story of Joel Edgerton’s character gets too much attention
Cora winds up holed up in an attic with a girl, Grace (Mychal-Bella Bowman), in the home of a white couple willing to hide them. This, too, becomes a form of enslavement — and Ethel (Lily Rabe), the wife of the man who took them in, is none too happy about the situation, accepting Cora only grudgingly. The tension is agonizing.
All along the way, a slave catcher single-minded of purpose named Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton) is in pursuit of Cora. He considers it a personal score to settle — her mother Mabel is the one person he never caught, and it haunts him. He and Homer (Chase Dillon), a Black boy he bought, freed and uses as his driver and assistant, comb the south looking for Cora.
Here Jenkins takes a lengthy detour into Ridgeway’s backstory. It necessarily shifts the story away from Cora and her struggle, though the two will crash into each other’s lives throughout the series. Cora’s travels will take her through Tennessee — a burned-out husk of a state after wildfires — and eventually Indiana, a kind of Black utopia.
But the inhumanity of slavery and racism stains every frame of the series, as it did every page of the book. What’s horrifying is the casual dismissiveness with which people are treated. Ridgeway refers to Caesar as “it,” not “him.” No white people bat an eye.
It is heartbreaking. But it is also infuriating. If he lets the story meander a little, particularly in the middle, Jenkins never lets viewers off the hook.