[ad_1]
Rapper Tupac Shakur once tore the acronym of his mantra "T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. ":" The hate you gave to toddlers [expletive] everyone, "he said of systematic injustices. "What you give us as seeds, grows and explodes in your face." More than two decades after her death, her message has been transformed into "The Hate U Give", Angie Thomas' bestseller, in 2017, about a black teenager who lives through these inequalities first-hand.
"Pac will always be relevant," Khalil (Algee Smith) insists on his childhood friend Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) in this non-uniform film adaptation directed by George Tillman Jr. Moments later, Khalil will be dead, shot dead by a nervous white policeman. who shoots them and takes his hairbrush for a pistol.
The problem with relevance is that sometimes it means that not enough has changed for the better. Art is a way to take this fact into account. That's why, as more and more black artists hide behind the camera and enter the writers' room, the story of police brutality has almost become a genre in itself. Some recent works, such as Ava DuVernay's television series "Queen Sugar" and Solange Knowles' 2016 album "A Seat at the Table", have been more effective than others in exploring the psychological record of this brutality with care and nuance. "The Hate U Give" by Mr. Tillman (with a screenplay by Audrey Wells) is somewhere in the middle.
The film begins with a powerful affirmation of darkness, both in its beauty and in its burden. In voiceover, Starr recalls that his father, Maverick (Russell Hornsby, excellent), said:The Talk, "a familiar rite of passage for many American blacks about navigation (and survival) in a predominantly white world, for his young man and his two brothers. He wants to instill in them a sense of pride and the ten-point program principles of the Black Panther Party.
As a teenager, Starr is a sneakerhead uncomfortably riding opposite worlds – Garden Heights, a mostly black, low-income neighborhood, is where she has always been called home; It is at Williamson Prep, a predominantly white private school, that she attends school with her seven brothers (Lamar Johnson) and Sekani (TJ Wright). She works hard every day to separate them, hiding her white boyfriend, Chris (K.J. Apa), from her father, while monitoring her own appearance and actions at school. The black vernacular makes her white comrades cool, she observes. "Slang makes me" hood ".
Its switching code is the most intriguing plot, in part because young black protagonists of popular culture are still rare. (A majority of recent television shows and movies featuring black characters, such as "Insecure" and the televised remake "She Must Have It" focused on 20 to 30 year olds. Mrs. Stenberg is a stark incarnation of Starr's dichotomies – self-doubt and trust; introversion and outspokenness – but the main plot of the film is Khalil's death and the way he pushes Starr to pose as an activist.
Yet the story is struggling to effectively combine all this with the kind of thoughtful complexity that Ms. Thomas has brought to her novel for young adults. Mr. Apa's Chris, for example, proposes a sweet and sincere boyfriend, and the film reviews his disturbing statement of the tired axiom "I do not see any color" when he expresses his disappointment as to to the way Starr kept his connection with the pull a secret.
Elsewhere, rapper Common plays a small role as Starr's uncle, Carlos, a police officer. There is only a vague understanding of the tension resulting from this situation, condensed into a late conversation in the film in which he defends the police shots at Starr by explaining what an officer might think when he interacts with a civilian. Fortunately, the moment does not end on a #BlueLivesMatter note, although it is getting closer. But it's a missed opportunity; after a succinct replica of Starr, the plot continues.
This is the other aspect of cultural relevance: if you rely too much on deep characterization, you risk scratching the surface. Ms. Stenberg, Mr. Hornsby and other members of the ensemble (including Regina Hall, Starr's mother, Lisa) are more than capable of exploring the depths of their characters, but an insignificant scenario does not lead them to now.
Hate U Give
Ranked PG-13 for traumatic violence. Duration: 2 hours 12 minutes.
Source link
