‘Clemency’ soars as death-row drama with standout Alfre Woodard
Why has “Clemency,” a remarkable death-row drama from writer-director Chinonye Chukwu, winner of the 2019 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, been absent from most 2019 awards races? Certainly, Alfre Woodard, the film’s lead, should have been a more prominent part of the conversation for best actress.
As the deeply conflicted prison warden Bernadine Williams, Woodard, a force of nature in the industry for decades, delivers a performance of enormous intensity, doing her best to maintain Bernadine’s humanity, however vulnerable, while remaining an executive in a system that kills young black men.
In this case, that young black man is the physically imposing and also sympathetic Aldis Hodge of TV’s “Underground.” Hodge plays Anthony Woods, just another inmate on death row in America, whose court-appointed lawyer Marty Lumetta (Richard Schiff, powerful as ever) is using every legal maneuver in the book to keep his client and friend alive … for now.
Woods has his proverbial whole life ahead of him, except he is staring into the deep, dark abyss of death, and it is driving the young man crazy enough to slam his head against the wall of his cell with almost enough force to cheat the state of the satisfaction of putting him to death. Hodge was convicted of killing a police officer in a hit-andrun. But it remains deliberately, if not frustratingly unclear what role he played in the event. We don’t know much about Bernadine, either, except that she has reached the top of her profession, earned the respect and fondness of her mostly burly, male colleagues and tried to behave with propriety and professionalism.
“Clemency,” which often recalls “The Green Mile” and, yes, another current release, the real-life “Just Mercy,” begins with the execution of another inmate hoping for a last minute reprieve. The procedure goes terribly wrong, and the supposedly painless “lethal” injection must be re-administered before the agonized and terrified prisoner dies. It is, as others have observed, difficult to watch these scenes.
Bernadine and her husband, Jonathan (a terrific as usual Wendell Pierce), who wants to retire, have gone through a rough patch in their marriage, and Bernadine is spending too much time drinking at a local bar where her colleagues hang out. Jonathan tries to surprise Bernadine with a romantic, home-cooked dinner. But it all goes awry, and the two wind up together in their cold bed.
In order to reach the pinnacle of her profession, Bernadine has obviously kept some part of herself locked away as securely as the men behind the steel bars of her prison. Hodge, for his part, viscerally relates what it is like for a young man full of life and vigor when he knows it is all about to be taken away from him. Veteran character actor Michael O’Neill is a standout as the prison chaplain, a crumbling tower of a man of God with a conflicted conscience of his own.
Writer-director Chukwu is a major new filmmaker on the scene. “Clemency” beats the heck out of “Just Mercy,” and that is saying something.