SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU B
USA (84 mi) 2016
‘Scope d: Richard Tanne
Acknowledging the paucity of black filmmakers coming out of
Hollywood today, perhaps it’s only natural that the writer and director behind
this project is a white Jewish guy from New Jersey who has the audacity to make
a fictionalized film about the first date of the sitting President of the
United States and the First Lady while they are still in office. If the film came out of Hollywood, it would
be announced with plenty of fanfare and hoopla, perhaps playing to a political
base or a targeted demographic. Instead
this came out of Sundance nearly unannounced, without a major ad campaign. As is, it’s actually a quiet and remarkably
understated character piece that focuses on the intelligence of both
characters, who are perhaps blown away at meeting someone of the opposite sex
that is as smart, ambitious, and deliciously charming as they are, both black
overachievers. It’s not often we see
that in the movies, so audiences may be mixed on this one, as the world of film
doesn’t often get to tell these kinds of stories, real or imagined. Perhaps the best of its kind is Barry
Jenkins’ Medicine
for Melancholy (2008), an unassuming
first date picture between two highly intelligent black independents in their
20’s from San Francisco, where the film spends 24 hours with them, much of it
in real time, as they feel each other out discussing race and the low
percentage (just 7%) of blacks living in San Francisco, spending the day
visiting the Museum of the African Diaspora, an affordable housing coalition
meeting, before watching a concert. It’s
a surprisingly similar scenario to the Obama first date, visiting an Afro
exhibit at an art museum, having lunch in a nearby park, visiting a community
meeting at a local church, before heading off to see Spike Lee’s Do the
Right Thing (1989), where in each the evolving personalities take center
stage. No one writes naturalistic
dialogue as well as Richard Linklater, whose conversational trilogy Before
Sunrise (1995), Before
Sunset (2004) and Before
Midnight (2013) documenting the personal exploration of two characters over
time stands near the apex of his artistic achievement, all perhaps drawn from
Rossellini’s Journey
to Italy (1954). While those may be
masterworks, this, by comparison, is a small but unpretentious film that just
happens to tell a real story about one day in the life of Barack and Michelle
Obama when they were just ordinary people, before they were a couple or really
knew one another, and before the spotlight of their lives became scrutinized as
public figures.
To its credit, the film is not a biographical account of
what happened, where they are impersonating existing lives, but is instead an
imaginary journey of what might have happened, including invented conversations
of what they may have said, grounded in a reality of events that took place in
Chicago, gathered from what we already know from two books written by Obama, all
envisioned through the eyes of a first-time director. Surprisingly, he does not embarrass himself,
which could permanently derail his career, and instead presents an
impressionistic mosaic of shifting mood swings, where much of their dialogue is
a battle of wits, with the more reserved Michelle (Tika Sumpter, who is also
an executive producer) continually
deflecting Barack’s (Parker Sawyers) openly expressed interest. Both were employed by the same corporate law
firm, Sidley & Austin, the only two black people in the firm, where in 1989
he is a summer associate, having just completed his first year at Harvard Law
School, while she is a second year associate, having already graduated from
Harvard Law School, making her Barack’s advisor at the time. To her, their friendship is strictly a
professional relationship, not wishing to blemish her reputation at the firm,
while the seemingly more relaxed Barack, cigarette always in hand in those
days, seems to have other inclinations. Both
are from starkly different backgrounds, where she comes from a solidly South
side, working-class background, still living at home with her parents, with her
father developing symptoms of multiple sclerosis, while Barack has traveled the
globe, living for a time in Indonesia, raised by white grandparents in Hawaii,
presumably for a better education, where he’s largely been absent from his own
parents. As a result, there’s some
emotional distance to cover, where the other provides something uniquely
different for each of them to understand.
Initially, however, it’s Michelle who is caught off-guard, thinking this
young upstart might be trying something slick, Southside
with You Movie CLIP - This is Not a Date (2016) - Tika Sumpter Movie
YouTube (1:06). Both exhibit a fiery spirit,
where their eloquence with words gives the other pause, with both playing a
kind of cat and mouse game, each taking personal jabs at the other, reaching
into one another’s private inner sanctum, where thankfully there are plenty of
silences to allow the changing moods to sink in. As the day progresses, they still remain
together, though there are ample opportunities to cut it short, yet to their
credit, they maintain the intensity levels, keeping their charm and wits about
them, even as this is perceived as something of a marathon date. While the director acknowledges it all
happened, it’s likely that the visit to a community meeting may have taken
place on another day, with the director claiming poetic license.
The film opens with a certain apprehension and anxiety in
the air felt by both before what is obviously a significant event, with
Michelle downplaying it in front of her parents, but fooling neither one, while
Barack fends off a phone call from his grandmother informing her this is a girl
with a darker complexion, suggesting prior white girl issues. Arriving in his beat-up yellow Datsun with a
rusted-out hole on the floorboard of the passenger’s side, with the music
blaring Janet Jackson, Janet
Jackson - Miss You Much - YouTube (4:20), the chain-smoking Barack is customarily
late, which she takes issue with, visiting an exhibition at the Art Institute,
which was off limits for shooting, so instead it was shot down the street at the
Chicago Cultural Center, featuring a vibrantly colorful Afrocentric art exhibit
by Ernie Barnes, having a discussion standing in front of the painting Room Ful’A Sistahs, Southside
With You "Not As They Appear" Featurette - Now Playing in Select
Cities! YouTube (1:13). Barack
points out his artwork was featured on the television show Good Times (1974 – 79) as well as Marvin Gaye’s 1976 album cover of
“I Want You.” Stick around for the
duration of the end credits, as his work is gorgeously featured there as
well. While it’s a beautiful setting, so
is the walk in the park afterwards, actually filmed in the lush greenery of
Douglas Park on the city’s West side, offering her a slice of pie (“Who doesn’t
like pie?”), but she prefers ice cream, where they actually start to open up to
each other, Southside
With You "Grade School" Featurette [HD] Tika Sumpter, Parker Sawyers
YouTube (1:27), hearing the music of a conga circle nearby, where a young black
girl picks Michelle to come dance with her, easily the most exquisitely
liberating moments of the film, before finally heading to the community meeting
at the Altgeld Gardens public housing project on the far south side, one of the
city’s oldest housing projects, isolated from the rest of the city and nearly 5
miles to the closest police station. The
scenes were actually shot at the historic Quinn Chapel (Original file), one of the
oldest black churches in the country sitting atop one of the freedom stops on
the Underground Railway, a site where speeches have been made by Frederick
Douglass, W.E. Dubois, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, Susan
Anthony, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, along with noted preachers Martin Luther King,
Jr., Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and Jesse Jackson, as well as President Barack
Obama. The walkway to the meeting site
is through a yellow brick tunnel where the names of gunshot victims are written
on the walls, a relic from the past that is as pertinent today as it was when
it happened, where the couple moves through this walkway in total silence, as
if observing a shrine to the past. Once
inside, the meeting has the ring of a lovefest for the young Obama, having
worked as a community organizer in Altgeld Gardens before entering law school,
where women can’t wait to share feel-good stories about him to Michelle, where
he’s treated like a returning hero.
The meeting holds a central place in the film, as it’s the first
time Michelle is completely taken aback by the startling power of his innate qualities,
where she gets a chance to see him in his own element, holding court in a room
full of angered low income housing residents who are used to being frustrated
by an apathetic system that perpetually denies their funding requests and leaves
them completely out of the process. Billboards and pamphlets that advertise the city’s
prowess as a “city that works” do not include these residents, who are often
viewed by the rest of the city as a dumping ground of discontent, a jobless community
so depressed that whatever money flows through their coffers appears to go down
the drain, as every year it remains a major crime area filled with out-of-control
gangs. It’s hard to get your hopes up
when everyone’s dreams are dashed. Like a
scene out of John Ford’s YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939), Barack has an inspiring nobility
about him, refusing to be deterred by constant setbacks, offering his view that
they’re actually in a better position than they’ve ever been, pointing out the
nature of how difficult it is in a democracy to change the minds and hearts of
those sitting in power, who have to continually be reminded of the
resourcefulness coming from dispossessed communities. He gives a great speech, literally changing
the mindset of those in the room, deflecting the fury, offering the prospect
that they can ultimately succeed if they refuse to back down, reassess their
interests, and perhaps utilize a less confrontational, more inclusive strategy
that suggests what’s best for them is actually better for the city overall. It’s an impressive display of Obama’s grassroots
organizing skills, where he is asking residents to withhold their judgments (a
lesson he attributes to his newfound friend) about what seems like a corrupt
and contaminated system until they have a chance to see it through, as the
building blocks of progress are made in a series of achievable accomplishments
that others around them eventually come to recognize and respect. While Michelle is not exactly blown off her
feet, she finds it suspiciously clever that he invited her to a community meeting
where he happened to be the central speaker.
Not yet ready to call it a day, they have drinks in Hyde Park, though it’s
actually a bar near Douglas Park called The Water Hole Lounge, Southside
with You Movie CLIP - Make A Difference (2016) - Tika Sumpter Movie YouTube (1:19), where the two spar over a
beer about which is the best Stevie Wonder album, with Michelle making the case
for Talking Book while Barack is an Innervisions kind of guy, before heading
out to watch the controversial Spike Lee film where brutally excessive police
tactics cause an innocent death, leading to a furious state of rage on the
street that is broken by an incendiary turn of events that has divided
audiences for decades, a literal standoff between the non-violent teachings of
Martin Luther King and the “any means necessary” of Malcolm X. Most black audiences instinctively understand
the ending, while whites inevitably tend to question the use of violence to
fight violence, having never endured the same oppressive conditions. Bumping into a senior partner from their law
firm after the film, both employees act embarrassed and defensive in his
presence, as the film perhaps unnecessarily strives to make that same
point. By the end of the night, a visit
to the neighborhood Baskin-Robbins shop for ice cream seems to seal the deal,
creating a well-earned truce between their harboring doubts about one another,
nothing that a brief kiss can’t overcome in a nanosecond. It would be three years before they’d marry,
but this little indie film sets the tone for a romantic spark.
Nice that you remembered Medicine for Melancholy. You'll be thrilled that Jenkins has finally written and directed a second film--Moonlight. It was given a standing ovation at its world premiere in Telluride this Labor Day weekend. It will have a single screening at Chicago's festival next month with Barry in attendance. That should be at the top of your list of films to see.
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