‘Sinners’ is as a bold manifesto on music, wrapped in a Southern vampire tale
Michael B. Jordan and breakout star Miles Caton lead the superb ensemble cast of “Sinners.” Image courtesy of Warner bros.
“Sinners” opens with ancient lore, “There are legends of people with a gift of making music so true, it can conjure spirits from the past and the future. This gift can bring fame and fortune, but it can also pierce the veil between life and death.” Even before the film transports the audience to the Deep South, it proclaims the irresistible power and dual nature of music. What follows is a cinematic triumph, as one of the finest modern filmmakers made the words flesh and orchestrated an indelible, phantasmagorical ride.
With a busted guitar and brutal laceration on his face, a bloodied and horrified man enters a white chapel. Before we learned of his name and trade, the film spooled back hours earlier to one crisp but portentous morning in Clarksdale, Mississippi in October 1932. Twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan assumes both roles) return to their hometown to build a juke joint for the Black communities. Their first recruit is their cousin Sammie (first-time actor Miles Caton), the bloodied and horrified man from earlier, who is a sharecropper and the eldest son of the preacher. As the night takes shape, an old sawmill transforms into a raucous joint filled with booze, blues, and Black people. But like most parties, it attracted uninvited guests, whose taste for music and blood are both peculiar.
For a vampire film, “Sinners” took its precious time—about an hour in—to reveal the undead, because it spent the first half to introduce us to its cast of characters. One of the more remarkable skills of director Ryan Coogler is to provide individual actors with moments to shine in a stacked ensemble. Michael B. Jordan, a precept of Coogler cinema, delivers an impressive, career-best performance. While both twins are not to be messed with, Smoke is more laidback and Stack is all business. And with mere hats to serve as visual markers, Jordan had to delve into his arsenal to differentiate his dual roles.
Ryan Coogler directs Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo in his most ambitious film to date.
The rest of the ensemble cast is just as capable (an understatement) as the lead star, with none more phenomenal than Miles Caton. With a rich and resonant voice that belies his youth, Caton is the perfect choice to play Sammie, a blues wunderkind who can “pierce the veil between life and death.” His mentor, sort of, is Delta Slim, a talented musician and drunkard. In the hands of the Delroy Lindo, Slim is an affectionate elder with profound personal sorrows etched on his face. No other scene illustrates better than the one where he narrates how his friend died.
One of the most pleasurable rewards of “Sinners” is how four women shone in supporting roles in a male-led film. Wunmi Mosaku as the hoodoo practitioner (not to be confused with voodoo) and former flame of Smoke is an empathetic presence. Li Jun Li is the shrewd Chinese proprietor Grace who suffered a terrible fate. (Chinese settlers were recruited to replace emancipated Black people, but gave up the abandoned plantation work in the late 1800s to start small businesses.). Hailee Steinfeld knocked it out of the park as the spirited (another understatement) lover of Stack. As Pearline, the married woman Sammie fell hard for, Jayme Lawson is an exquisite seductress. Her remarkable performance of “Pale, Pale Moon,” a vibrant but sensual musical production (the second best in the entire film), is ample reason for a preacher’s son to commit multiple sins.
Speaking of musical productions, none is more memorable than Sammie’s juke debut of “I Lied to You.” Great music is transcendental, but Sammie is supernatural because his performance transcended time and space (in the literal sense) that saw musicians from the past and future coalesce under one roof. The sequence saw the brilliance of the “Sinners” production team, who were previous collaborators of the directors, in full force. But as music takes front and center, it is the blues-suffused musical score of Ludwig Goransson that elevates the film to greater heights.
“Sinners” is an intricate pleasurable piece of pop culture that invites multiple interpretations. I implore people to read articles from Black film critics for deeper historical and cultural assessments. But let me take a stab at the power and dual nature of music. The juke joint is a transient respite from the harsh social realities of that time (i.e. injustice and racism). It is also a form of resistance: a business with Black proprietors who can refuse customers. When Sammie conjured the ancestors from the past and the descendants from the future, he also summoned the undead. The Irish vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell) saw the potential of music as a means to free him from the immortal curse. Music attracts the sacred and profane in both the real and supernatural realms.
Blues, like other forms of popular music, is called the “devil’s music. The preacher beseeches Sammie to end his musical dreams and become and follow in his footsteps. But in the darkest moment of his life, inside the House of God, he chose the blues. That he finds liberation and nourishment in music more than organized religion is the obvious manifesto of “Sinners.” As one of the characters remarked, Blue is theirs and is free from colonial influence, unlike the church. Or as Remmick told Sammie, “Our Father” reminded him of the people who took their lands and forced their faith on them. Whew.
