MongooseCmr wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 6:57 pm
I completely forgot it existed until today. I only saw Lovers Rock and outside a few great needle drops it left no impression. Felt as indistinct and passable as any prestige streaming tv
That's a decidedly minority opinion, to say the least.
Granted, I grew up in West London (I'm a few years younger than the people in the film) and remember that milieu well (as, evidently, does Ealing native McQueen), so it was always going to speak to me on a fairly fundamental level, but Odie Henderson doesn't have that background and it clearly
spoke to him as well. In fact, both his review and
Peter Bradshaw's do a very good job of fleshing out historical/cultural details that were left unsaid, because it's all about capturing the mood and the moment.
It's hard to pick a favourite
Small Axe film, as they're all exceptional in varying ways (to answer What A Disgrace above, they very definitely are major work), but I think it might come to a tie between
Lovers Rock for immersive atmosphere and
Mangrove for ambition (as well as utterly transforming my impression of Darcus Howe, who was ubiquitous on telly as a rather shouty pundit in later years, but who made a genuinely important contribution to black British history in a way that hasn't really been celebrated enough until
Mangrove was made).
