Black Panther, 6th March 2018
The Tourist fancies himself as some kind of high culture dandy so he is normally dubious about fantasy, superhero, action genre films and the like. No plot. no characterisation, lazy, frequently daft, stultifyingly dull effects. There are exceptions if the ideas and treatments warrant it, Blade Runner 2049 most recently, but recent trips to see Star Wars instalments have proved tiresome.
So no interest up to now in the Marvel Studios output. The reviews though made Black Panther sound different, not just because of its Afrocentric setting and largely black creatives, but because of the quality of the result and the originality of the plot. And the Tourist doesn’t want to come across as a hair-shirted, intellectual humble-braggart, intent on only seeing what is good for him.
Black Panther didn’t start off too well. Hoary flash-back set-up, a few listless character tropes, an overwhelming soup of visual influences. But then I unclenched my elitist buttocks, stopped thinking about the smarmy things I could say about it and went with the flow. A flow of utter nonsense of course, but it is childish fantasy, so why bother analysing it, and a fall and rise redemption narrative arc which was telescoped from that first flashback, but it looks marvellous, literally, and the performances are brimming with, cliche alert, brio.
The powerful messages, the evil of Africa’s historic colonisation, the contrast between African and African American inheritances and stereotypes, the harnessing of technological power, are not laid on with a trowel, and the film dials down the visual effects in lieu of something more, frankly, stylish. The Afrofuturism aesthetic is, obviously, pretty cool, but director Ryan Coogler, and the artistic team led by production designer Hannah Bleachler, resist getting too pleased just with the look of the thing. In big screen Wakanda the technological is wedded to the organic, the past to the future, with plenty of sun-saturated daylight. A complete contrast to your standard fantasy setting even if the origin myth is not.
The cast is outstanding. Chadwick Boseman’s King T’Challa does border on the Hamletian instrospection, but this sharpens the focus for Michael B Jordan who plays aggrieved cousin Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, flip sister Shuri (Tottenham’s finest Letitia Wright), cheerfully sadistic Afrikaans baddie Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) and Forrest Whitaker’s Polonius like Zuri. Daniel Kaluuya as W’Kabi does his trademark, who the f*ck do you think you are, scary stare and Martin Freeman, as Everett K Ross, once again, amiably wanders in from an entirely different movie set in Surrey. I do hope both these chaps don’t give up on the stage with all these Hollywood capers. Danai Gurira’s striking warrior Okoye and Lupita Nyong’o’s graceful spy Nakia should be gifted their own fictional nation on this showing. I am hoping some enterprising London theatre might sport a showing of Danai Gurira’s play Eclipsed which starred Lupita Nyong’o in its Broadway run.
To whom it may concern at Marvel. Let’s have another one of these please. You have a new devotee.
At Home He Feels Like A Tourist 