Movies to Watch: Attack The Block (Patreon)

I feel absurd talking about movies right now, let alone recommending them.

Because right now is about action, using your money (bail funds seem to be overflowing, many are recommending switching to multi-purpose mutual funds - a good thread here), using your time, elevating black voices, and making new opportunities for those same voices, all in part to create true structural change. 

But we also need to talk about the media we consume because it is irrevocably part of this system. They’re part of how we establish “status quos” and see the way society works (cue recent talk about the glorification of police on American television). And because we all need to watch stuff to help find moments of balance in our lives, it can help when we find movies that match both the intensity of what we are feeling and speak to the issues of the moment. So while my brain feels all over the place, while I feel helpless, while I’m certain I’m probably making mistakes in all this, I’m still trying to just talk about things in a million directions because it’s likely all a part of the same conversation anyway.

Going forward I’m going to be writing some short blurbs focusing on work by black creators, but please know I’m starting with this film because it happened to be in the news today…

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It took almost a decade for Attack The Block to start trending.

Spurred by the images of John Boyega passionately speaking about the Black Lives Matter movement in Hyde park and it reminded people of his presence of that 2011 film. I’m honestly not sure where Attack The Block falls in terms of society seeing it’s “cult status” or it as a “recognized classic” yet, but it deserves every accolade. Not just because it’s a great film, but because it speaks to the intersections of so many things going on now.

I admit it’s unfortunate conversations like this often have to be forced by national crisis. W. Kamau Bell even recently joked while appearing on Fallon by saying “it took all this to get me back on The Tonight Show.” Acknowledging this may make the host uncomfortable (Hell, it probably makes the audience uncomfortable), but Bell went on to articulate how important that uncomfortable feeling actually is. Because it’s precisely what gets people out of their lanes and willing to not only see the important things they don’t see, but engage the things they don’t often talk about.

I’m not going to spoil anything, because I’m going to assume many of you haven’t seen Attack the Block, but it really is about “what is seen” from the outside. Well, technically it’s a genre film about an alien invasion of “gorilla wolf motherfuckers” but it takes it’s central metaphor and spills it out to a million important conversations about where we see threats and why, the way white people see black criminality before they sees black humanity, and how the police basically take that horrible nature and turn it up to 11. And in that struggle, the film has really thoughtful things to say about who actually saves your community, how, and why.

But most of all I want to single out John Boyega as Moses, who serves as the centerpiece of the film. He must have been what, 18? Or 19 at the time? But it is one of the best performances from a teenager I’ve ever seen. With the pitch-perfect observational writing around him, Boyega was free to play the subtleties of the silence, the fear, and the courage that plague a young black “alpha male” who bears both the weight of toxicity influences of that position and the responsibilities of leading friends that comes with it. In doing so, both Boyega and the narrative slowly peel back the layers of Moses with remarkable understanding. It’s not “a character arc,” but instead one of my favorite “arcs of understanding a character” in modern memory.

Please, if you haven’t seen it, give it a watch.

More to come.

<3HULK