When we meet them they are on a rather awkward Tinder date, that seems merely okay, much like their existence up to that point. They live their lives for others , to (like so many of us) be an example that distinguishes itself from so many tropes and attitudes about us and sometimes by us. Slim doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and attends the same diner regularly because it is black owned. He exists but he doesn't live. He holds it in, he denies himself certain joys because he feels such things impair not only his senses and responses, but his armor. Slims lives his life as a protection from and against the very thing that happens to him anyway under white supremacy. Such is the feeling that all to often arises from being black in America. Queen is no different in that regard. She denies herself time to enjoy things, to fully realize people, to be average at things, or even bad at it. She is filled with a righteous anger (which she puts into her work as a defense lawyer) and an acute eye for red flags and danger, but has no idea when it is safe to let her guard down. This is justified by the reality of being black, and a woman in America, but it is not living. I've often thought of marginalization as an existing in a state of righteous paranoia. Paranoia being defined as delusions of persecution, the righteous being in front of it making it justifiable by way of a history of actual persecutions. Some of us know this feeling all too well even if we don't consciously recognize it. We are in a constant state of hyper-preparedness and alertness that leave us unable to truly live in the moment, to allow for all the variations in behavior, perception, and outcome that are possible because doing so is a risk in an already risk filled existence. The triggering event in the movie is like a snapped finger after a long trance. It wakes them up to all they have been missing, and their sense of the moment and of time becomes heightened. All the quicksand, the murk, the cobwebs, and caked on dust of a frail, and cold existence begin to shake themselves free, and warmth slowly but surely makes its way into the film which Matsoukas and cinematographer Tat Radcliffe highlight with increasingly textured and open shots as the film goes along. Queen opens herself up. She shares the weight and the wounds of her life with family, and to her mother, and to Goddess, and to Slim. She shares the burden, learns to take chances, and most importantly to enjoy the moment, irrespective of the presence of death in her life , of her mother, of her client, and now of herself. Slim takes a drink, smokes some weed, rides a horse. He begins to open himself up to vulnerability, to being less armored, and to take chances, and risks. The presence of death, the shadowy gnarled fingers of white supremacy are ever present in black lives. Despite our best efforts, they are always there, and our responses to it are fragmented and many, as this movie depicts to some degree. Despite the best efforts of the protagonists in this film when we are introduced to them, both white supremacy and death nearly snatched each of their lives, and in the aftermath they learned how to live fuller expression of their lives out from under, rather than just exist within it. Their fates, the varying responses to their plight, their resistance, were not of their own making, and it is not the movies intention to guide them there to make a point. These were simply the outgrowth of their own bold defiance. Thusly Queen and Slim becomes not a destination movie, but a movie about the journey. Not a meditation on black death, but an instruction on, and inspiration of what black life, black love, can look like free. It's an extension of any black persons desire (and especially artists) to be free from what is expected, or even from having to do what isn't expected. Queen and Slim is not about being ultra realistic, if it was, there would be fewer people helping them, more scenes with cops in them. It's not only a political movie either, though the politics of black lives are present nonetheless. It's not about shocking us, or disavowing us, it is a film that just wants to tell a story of two people who find each other in the world and despite all that goes on around them and all that has happened to them - decide to hold on to each other and let go of the rest, giving us an adventure, a thriller, a love story, that expresses both fantasy and reality, imagining a radical existence for it's protagonists that transcends tragedy and struggle, rather than just living in and meditating in it and on it.
