Small Axe: Mangrove (2020)
dir. Steve McQueen
Rated: TV-MA
image: ©2020 Amazon Prime Video
It’s an exciting, confusing, and scary time to be a film lover. Director Steve McQueen has decided to hasten the blurring of the already very fuzzy line between cinema and television with his Small Axe anthology of films. He’s done it with the help of a global pandemic. McQueen began working on the idea for Small Axe as early as 2010, and he had the project in some form of development since 2012. Originally conceived as a more conventional television series for the BBC, McQueen realized that he had enough material to make five distinct, standalone movies.
When the premier of the first picture in the series, Mangrove, was cancelled because of the 2020 Cannes film festival shutdown in the spring, due to COVID, the director decided to try a hybrid approach to distribution. Small Axe would run on BBC One, as originally planned, but it was also featured in the fall at the virtually held 2020 New York Film Festival. The film community got a collective case of the vapors trying to decide how to classify Small Axe. Is it television? Is it cinema? After seeing Mangrove – and being highly anxious to visit the rest of the films in the series – I am coming down firmly in the camp of, “when the movie is this damn compelling and well-made, who the hell cares what you call it?”
Bring on the blurring. We’ll figure out what to call these pieces of art as we go.
The Small Axe anthology tells the stories of a West Indian immigrant community living in the Notting Hill section of London during the period of the 1960s to the 1980s. McQueen’s idea was to explore the Black experience in Britain.
Mangrove is the longest film in the series at 128 minutes. The rest of the episodes – that word doesn’t ring quite right, so I guess I am coming down on the “cinema” side of the debate, after all – run between 60 and 80 minutes each.
This first installment is based on the true story of the Mangrove Nine.
In 1971, Frank Crichlow, a British immigrant from Trinidad, is put on trial with eight other civil rights activists when police became violent during a civil rights march and demonstration. Each facing a decade in prison for inciting a riot, the Nine must defend themselves against a criminal justice system that is obviously biased against Black people. In addition to Crichlow, other defendants include Altheia Jones-LeCointe, a leader of the British Black Panthers, racial justice activist Darcus Howe, and activist Barbara Beese, who was in a romantic partnership with Howe at the time.
The dramatic and emotional core of Mangrove is Crichlow. A sort of reluctant activist, all Crichlow wants at the beginning of the film is to run his restaurant, the titular Mangrove. But the London police subject him and his business to a constant stream of harassment. They shut down the Mangrove through repeated raids, siting supposed drug use by the patrons, or on disturbing-the-peace complaints. Really, it’s about abusing and criminalizing what the police consider a racial underclass. One officer in particular, Constable Frank Pulley, has a deep-seated hatred for these Black immigrants, and he wants to make sure they understand their place.
The Pulley character is a bit cartoonish in the way his bigotry is presented. I’ve no doubt that this level of hatred has and continues to exist – I know who Bull Connor was, and I’m well aware of Richard Spencer – but actor Sam Spruell, who portrays Pulley, draws the real-life figure in only two dimensions.
McQueen, with the help of his co-screenwriter Alastair Siddons, draws the pernicious, systemic racism of London’s police force in the late 1960s in stark lines. At one point, we see a few cops sitting in the station house, playing cards. The rookie lays down the ace of spades, and he’s informed about the rule regarding that particular card. Anyone who plays it has to go out with his fellow officers and arrest the first “Black bastard” they come across. It’s the ugly stop-and-frisk policy as a sadistic game.
As heart-rending and politically charged as Mangrove makes the fight for racial equality, the movie also takes time to celebrate this community and its joyous spirit. Crichlow’s Mangrove restaurant is a safe space for his community to gather, break bread, express themselves, and celebrate their cultural identity. The few extended musical sequences – what I’ve heard is an exuberant recurring theme throughout Small Axe, especially in the second installment, Lovers Rock – are transcendent. In one, which features the beautiful sound of the steel drum, the patrons at the restaurant break into an impromptu dance party in the street in front of the establishment. McQueen captures a vibrant community with an indominable spirit.
The second half of Mangrove transforms into a courtroom drama, focusing on the trial of the Mangrove Nine. As if the cast of the film weren’t already in top form for the first section of the film, they all really get to shine when their characters attempt to expose, in a court of law, the racist London police for what they are.
Actor Shaun Parkes seethes with righteous anger and exasperation as Frank Crichlow. A stand-out scene comes for Parkes when the police violently throw his character into a holding cell during the trial. Crichlow bangs on the door with impotent rage, his shouts of “You’re wicked men! Wicked!” are haunting as his voice echoes in the cell and in our ears.
The phenomenally talented Letitia Wright turns in a powerful performance as Altheia Jones-LeCointe. Wright’s Black Panther leader, who struggles for worker solidarity as well as Black liberation, is unshakable in her convictions. Malachi Kirby shares several heated exchanges with Rochenda Sandall as the romantic couple and Black liberation activists Darcus Howe and Barbara Beese. One scene, in which we get some of Beese’s backstory about the hardships she suffered as a Black orphan in London, is a bit exposition heavy, but McQueen can be forgiven for trying to give us the full picture of these freedom fighters. Sandall is electric as Beese in every one of her scenes. Kirby plays Howe as a world-weary intellectual, committed to the cause, but exhausted by the constant uphill battle.
The highest praise I can give to Mangrove, which it absolutely deserves, is that I cannot wait to take the journey through the rest of the Small Axe films. This first installment has an emotional richness that I’m eager to (hopefully) experience in the other movies. Mangrove also looks sumptuous (thanks to cinematographer Shabier Kirchner’s gorgeous photography) and feels completely authentic to its late ‘60s/early ‘70s time period.
McQueen’s effort with the Small Axe experiment (at least, from what I’ve seen so far) is exceptional and classification-defying. His mixing and matching of format and his willingness to tear down the traditional boundaries between TV and the movies is exciting. When the talent is this rich, and the art this good, I’ll take it on any screen I can get it.
Why it got 4.5 stars:
- McQueen continues to prove how adept he is at combining visual flair with powerful storytelling. Mangrove is a moving experience. It would have easily made my top ten of the year, had I seen it in time.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- The anthology title, Small Axe, is a reference to the lyrics of a Bob Marley song of the same name: "If you are the big tree, we are the small axe."
- Mica Levi, also known by the stage name Micachu, does some phenomenal orchestral score work on Mangrove. Their almost queasy-sounding (that’s the best way I know how to describe it) strings, particularly during the scene with Frank Crichlow in the prison cell that I mentioned in the main review, add a sense of dread. I’m a big fan of Levi’s musical scores for the films Under the Skin and Jackie.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
Here in the States, Amazon acquired the rights to Small Axe. All five films are available for free with an Amazon Prime subscription, and I’m assuming you could rent or buy them if you aren’t a Prime subscriber.