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| Tessa Thompson (second from left) leads ensemble cast in "Dear White People" (Lionsgate/Roadside) |
Most admirable about Justin Simien’s Dear White People is its confidence.
Despite an undercooked narrative and a glaring lack of centrality, this film often
dazzles through its unapologetic activism and biting satire. It’s direct and
blatant yet sneakily empathetic, and provokes a vital conversation about race in
contemporary America.
Simien, a first-time writer/director, introduces an
ensemble of black students at the fictional Ivy League school Winchester, and
initiates a discussion about the kind of overcompensation, assimilation and
general identity crises that black students, in a significant minority yet in a
“post-racial” society, contend with individually and as a collective. Teyonah
Parris (Dawn on Mad Men) plays Colandrea
“Coco,” fame-seeking yet too comfortable and conflict-free – for a black woman –
to attract the attention of the industry. Troy (Brandon P. Bell), the golden
boy, gets pushed too hard by his father, the Dean of Students at the school
(Dennis Haysbert). And Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams, titular character in
Everybody Hates Chris), gay, “Mumford
and Sons”-loving and sci-fi-obsessed, actively avoids other black students, who
he generalizes to be homophobic and brutish.
The three are joined by Samantha White (Tessa
Thompson, Veronica Mars), whose radio
show “Dear White People” playfully works as Simien’s framing device. Simien’s
work with Troy, Coco and Lionel fluctuates in effectiveness, but his grip on
Samantha never wavers. She is, on the one hand, that archetypal college student
that has taken on too much and is gradually falling apart – her father is sick
and her coursework is piling up, and yet, she’s running for House President and
has unassumingly taken on a spokeswoman-like role for the black student
community.
But Simien walks a tightrope with Samantha. She’s
arguably the film’s central and most detailed character, and yet through her,
the director commits to illuminating Dear White
People’s purpose, its contradictory ideas, its anger and frustration, and
its emotional volatility. Doing so occasionally leaves this first film feeling very
freshman: Samantha, a media studies major, learning to effectively
communicate the blatant racism surrounding her (yet incomprehensible to her
peers) through moviemaking exemplifies the sort of on-the-nose traps Dear White People has a tendency to fall
into.
But does it matter if Simien’s ideas are so fully
thought-out and considered? He starts from a place of justifiable anger – that
racism is persisting in American institutions, and far too many are turning a
blind eye to it – but explores that indignation through, importantly, several prisms.
Dear White People comes off like a
lightweight, looking and acting like a college-set film accessible for college
students – parent asking too much of his son, sacrifices of self that come with
trying to get noticed, inability to fit into one, single “group” – but the
impact is just the opposite. At his best, Simien rather brilliantly twists such
tropes with an essential question: how is the pursuit of fame, or the pursuit
of success, or the pursuit of self-worth, or the pursuit of simply fitting in
complicated by racial identity?
Sometimes, his work feels more like a promising
television pilot, spinning around characters that probe interesting questions
even if we can’t quite invest in them. He juggles four – maybe more –
storylines that predictably converge in the movie’s climax, but the whole is
never quite the sum of Simien’s parts. It’s such a complicated balance not only
to write about, but to consider as a viewer; one can respect the way Simien
turns the story of the overtasked A-student into one of overcompensation, but his
transgressive approach still extracts a character and storyline devoid of complexity
and limply realized. It’s a problem that extends to both Coco and Lionel as
well, and in general, keeps Dear White
People from truly transcending the material it’s deliberately evoking and
shaking up.
But – and here is the major caveat – Simien’s finished
work emerges as essential, magnificently confrontational and consistently
intelligent. As a writer, Simien expresses a perceptiveness that is both mordantly
funny and calculatingly uncomfortable – and here’s where he uses Samantha as a
filter so brilliantly. Her studies in media lead to some blisteringly funny commentary
on the different tastes of different cultures – “I sat through Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind and Tarantino Week,” she laments to a
professor – but she also voices ideas about the troubling perspectives many
still have on black Americans, about the hypocrisy and importance of
political-correctness (“If you describe black people as ‘African Americans,’
you are racist,” goes a scintillating “Dear White People” entry), and about the
practically-overt racism that still pervades American media and, yes, education.
What’s so fantastic about Dear White People as a conversation-starter is that while hyperbole
is undeniably embraced, several conflicting viewpoints about race and youth and
culture that ring so true are at its very root – it’s hard to not come away
thinking about Simien’s various approaches and evaluating them not as a part of
the film, but as ideas in greater American culture. This is such a refreshingly
rough and honest take on race that successfully considers questions and
patterns very much a part of our lives, yet hardly talked about or questioned.
White Americans may not want to be thinking about their capacity to be racist,
or their inability to internally normalize black America, but Simien argues –
rightly, forcefully, intently – that they need to.
As touched on earlier, when you move away from the
humor and the ideas in Dear White People,
it becomes more of a mixed-bag. Parris (who I like a lot on Mad Men, and at least demonstrated some
versatility here) and Bell – as well as several supporting characters – don’t
get much to work with and fail to make much of an impression. It’s easy not to
blame the actors – they’re not distracting or “bad” per se, and it’s easier to
look at the writing and see that there’s not much they could have done. But then you
get Haysbert, who’s handed a classically under-written part: the father who
expects too much of his son. Despite there not being that much on the page, he
gets a scene in which he conveys so much with his teary eyes, his crackling
voice, his shaky physical demeanor – there’s an immediate expression of race-based insecurity, paranoia about the way his son is seen in (white) others’ eyes,
guilt that he must go the extra mile and protect his son from an unjust
world. It’s one of the best-acted scenes I’ve seen this year, a reminder that
Haysbert is a criminally-underused, intensely-powerful actor.
And great writing meets a great actor to create Thompson’s complicated, funny and affecting performance. Every contradictory
idea thrown into Dear White People is
internalized by Thompson, a balance that is extremely tough to play. Not only does the
young actress handle it with aplomb, but she goes the extra mile. She’s funnier
than she needs to be, her anger is controlled and never veers into the very
stereotype Samantha is accused of, and there’s just this general sense that
Thompson is completely removed from this character, that she’s totally
inhabited her. Credit also goes to Simien: there are several moments in this
movie when it’s justified to wonder why this movie is not Samantha’s and only
Samantha’s. Here is a gritty and layered expression not only of racial
identity, but of college identity, of moving on from your parents’ child into your own individual, contending with hitherto unfamiliar expectations.
Simien’s end-of-film-twist ranks among my favorite of
the year, for the way it generally surprises and crystalizes his principal
intent. There’s a general idea here: can the capacity for racism of white
characters in a film be tested as a way to explore our own – college students’,
Americans’, the world’s – ghastly capabilities? It’s a smart idea, like so many
others in Dear White People. If
Simien’s ideas trump the film’s execution, he still achieves what he wants to
achieve: a conversation about race and identity in a way that may induce
laughter or squirming, but doesn’t let anyone off the hook.
Grade:
B
In theaters now.
For a different, more critical read on Dear White People, here's Andrew's take.