Review: Between the World and Me Is a Sharp, If Visually Limited, Social Document

The film doesn’t offer the most incisive social commentary, but as a document of our contemporary political moment, its force is undeniable.

Between the World and Me
HBO

Based on the Apollo Theater’s stage adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Pulitzer-nominated book of the same name, the themes that drive HBO’s Between the World and Me are perhaps even more relevant now than when the source material was first published in 2015. Written in the form of a letter to his 15-year-old son, Coates’s original text recounts his experiences growing up with the realities of racism and violence in West Baltimore, as well as describing the joys of finding belonging and love at Howard University, and, more broadly, discusses his feelings about being black in America.

The 2018 stage adaptation, directed by the Apollo’s executive director, Kamilah Forbes, was composed of a series of monologues, linearly working through the book with a large ensemble cast. A similar format is used here, and Forbes has assembled a spellbinding array of black talent to bring Coates’s words to life, including Mahershala Ali, Wendell Pierce, and Angela Bassett, alongside activist Angela Davis and Coates himself. Forbes also includes documentary footage of cast members at home, as well as deploys old home videos, recordings of historical speeches, and amateur footage of relevant real-world events.

A key incident in the book is the racially aggravated police killing of Prince Jones, one of Coates’s college friends, and the fresh injustices of the past year have also been woven into this one-off special to give the original text a renewed sense of urgency. Though the protests this year in the wake of George Floyd’s death and other incidents of police brutality have done much to underline the continued relevance of Coates’s message, the inclusion of these more recent events is sometimes at the expense of cohesion and focus.

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On paper, much of the power of Coates’s writing lies in its piercing clarity, combining objective reportage and precise social observation with a deep compassion, in a way that breathes new life into familiar themes. At his best, he makes you feel as though anything less than a complete reimagining of our social relations would be ignorant and complacent. Forbes’s use of newsreel of the protests and smartphone shots of police violence tends to detract from the film’s authorial voice, bringing us closer to the contemporary realm of deadening media spectacle and dulling the blade of Coates’s historically informed rhetoric.

Between the World and Me is also somewhat hamstrung by accommodating itself to the restrictions imposed on the production by the Covid-19 pandemic, which apparently limited the settings and shot choices available to Forbes, and the result is a heightening of the stilted presentation style that often afflicts theatrical adaptations. Filtering Coates through so many different voices already slightly undercuts the sense of intimacy that his epistolary form was intended to create, and the compositions used here often overcompensate for the lack of an audience, making performers seem even more isolated and incapable of interacting with others. Coates talks to his son about a sense of community being one of the few things that can alleviate the suffering he and fellow black Americans have been through, but there isn’t much opportunity for this to be expressed visually in the film.

At times, Forbes’s procession of shallow-focus monologues addressed directly to the camera bears an awkward resemblance to an infomercial or a political ad, but the moments when the device works can be profoundly moving, effectively fusing spontaneous performance with precisely crafted personal testimony. The most successful scenes tend to be the ones where the performers embrace the artificiality of the setup, instead of trying to work around it. Ali in particular leans into the phrasing and rhythm of the text as if it was a well-worn soliloquy to be recited, rather than trying to inhabit a character. This reverence for the source material transforms the best readings into a kind of spoken-word poetry, not dissimilar to the excellent hip-hop soundtrack that gives Between the World and Me its pulse.

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Ultimately, the limitations of Between the World and Me may be reflective of Coates’s own pessimistic views about the insurmountability of white supremacy, and his suggestions of the impossibility of real structural change. But the impact of the film’s consistently excellent performances transcends its occasional tone of weary resignation. It’s a powerful experience to witness the rawness of some of the monologues cut through the overly familiar symbolism, as if we’re watching the performers privately reckon with injustice and reaffirm their own sense of humanity. Between the World and Me doesn’t necessarily offer the most incisive social commentary, but as a document of our contemporary political moment, its force is undeniable.

Score: 
 Cast: Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Courtney B. Vance, Phylicia Rashad, Wendell Pierce, Mj Rodriguez, Oprah Winfrey, Janet Mock, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Angela Davis, Kendrick Sampson  Network: HBO

David Robb

David Robb is originally from the north of England. A fiction writer, he recently moved back to London after living in Montreal for three years.

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