Nightjohn

Its status as a Disney-produced TV film does show; the horrors of slavery are there, but they aren't graphic or lingered on. And things can get a bit contrived. What surprised me is just how good it looks: shots are consistently composed in smart and artful ways that make good use of academy ratio, and twilight/night-time scenes are gorgeous, suffused in rich, unreal golds and blues that impart a fabular, illustration-like quality to these respites from the brutal, blazing daytime.

Let's get the obvious out of the way: Burnett was working for Disney, and so the standard feel-good limitations are there. But he still manages to imbue this with such heart and humanity that brings a sense of refreshment to the experience, which itself feels odd in a movie about slavery. The people on screen are people (even the white villains, but especially the black leads) rather than stereotypes, and Burnett manages to reflect on a variety of themes: literacy, freedom, feminism, power, etc.

Oddly, it's almost impossible to find a movie focusing on black slavery in pre-2012 American cinema. White filmmakers seemed to have shied away from the subject. Charles Burnett, on the other hand, doesn't beat around the bush. Perhaps because it was made for TV, the film nevertheless follows a conventional arc and lacks the sophistication and grit of earlier works by Burnett, which is a shame. The fantastic Beau Bridges doesn't get much to work with in the one-note role of the slave-owner.

The actors are uniformly incredible and the complexity of it all is really well-handled. There's no cloying and there's no sense of grandstanding - until the ending, a big inspirational speech in a church that involves all the characters, which WORKS against all odds because of the time and effort Burnett put into the character work.