Judas and The Black Messiah: The Poltical is Made Impersonal.

In Carol Hanisch's now seminal feminist essay “The Personal is the Political” she argues all the ways that therapy, (or the personal) and the political which seem to be mutually exclusive is in fact the opposite. That what women go through personally cannot be parted from what the group goes through or who they are politically, or at least that has been what I have understood it to be. “The Personal is Political” since has become a popular refrain and even grown some extra meaning amongst those who consider themselves “conscious” or now “woke", and it is a thematic refrain I believe the creators behind Judas and the Messiah did not incorporate into their film.

“It’s true we all need to learn how to better draw conclusions from the experiences and feelings we talked about how to draw all kinds of connections. Some of us haven’t done a very good job of communicating them to others” -Carole Hanisch “The Personal is Political”

One of my main takeaways from Hanisch's essay was and is that the importance of the personal is that it is ultimately the engine of the political, in that the political cannot exist in any genuine way without the conditions of the personal or the conditions that cause personal grief damage, harm, self destruction. Out of the abyss of the white eurocentric insistence of logic over emotion Hanisch in plain language makes clear how the personal can be lost, or in some cases treated as a distraction, or in this case treated as a subplot to the political, and how that does a disservice to the message. To put it in even simpler terms, what we do is the political, why we do it is the personal. Yes, Politics regardless of the fact that they extend forth from the personal can and have managed to extract many times the personal from itself, and even on other occasions it has pushed the personal above the political, but make no mistake these two are in co-dependent relationship. That is the matter of the social dynamic, filmmaking on the other hand and even more specifically storytelling cannot truly exist in any way that is meaningful without the personal and this is one reason why movies as political messages don't work. When newcomer Shaka Kings film opens it tells us not of the personal conditions which drive William O Neal, ( LaKieth Stanfield) but instead who he is as a political tool. In short William O'Neal is a thief, stealing and capitalizing off of his own people for his own profit. He's an individualist, and a capitalist, and as such he is used. Why he is the way he is, the movie isn't interested in - from when it opens to when it moves gradually and sometimes thrillingly towards its close. This lack of interest in the “why" outside of the political reasoning makes it so that many of the shifts and changes meant to provide emotional punch, never quite land for me. It also makes most of it seem erratic and out of nowhere. I would find myself asking why William was moving the way that he moved, quite a number of times while watching. Why he was one minute hanging up on FBI agent Roy Mitchell ( Jesse Plemons) after he - in an act of cowardice- leaves his comrades hanging in a shootout saying he's done with this s*** and the next moment, helping the Panthers fix the shop that was blown up by the police and STILL iinforming on them without much explanation as to what has changed to cause either one of those things to continue for him? There is another moment where Hampton after seeing the final product of their work in restoring the community center - personally thanks William, Bill (as they call him) begins to tear up, and it's one of the few moments where I was genuinely moved by and impressed with the acting in the movie, but its clouded because this inner turmoil, this conflict going on in Bill did not resonate beyond the moment. In Malcolm X (which still stands, towers, as the gold standard of any sort of biopic or historical storytelling regarding political people that actually lived) there is a scene later in the movie where Malcolm revisits one of his old Pals “West Indian Archie” as played by the wonderful Delroy Lindo. The moment, that strong sense of sadness and melancholy, and tragedy that extends out from the scene is made so powerful because it is not only a representation of Archie's current situation, but a representation of bitterness of time, and decay, as well as the arc of Malcolm's life. Us now having “been” with Malcolm during that time in the movie and seen what he was like in that time running with Archie serves as a reminder of the passage of time meant to both, and this is the power and building character of the personal and the private to a movie that is very clearly also political. Maybe because “Malcolm X" had/has as its basis an actual autobiography where in Malcolm and Alex Haley clearly understood that the personal and the political are co-aligned, that we got the bits of Malcolm (his family background, people whom he called his friends, his psychology which she gained from the streets) that we got, which ultimately provide not only unique foundations for why Malcolm is who he is, but gives Denzel an entry point into who Malcolm is, all of which gives contextualization, which in turn gives power beyond political to Malcolm's Journey, which all in turn provide the emotional and logical punch, and where Judas.. is missing its. For instance the scene in which Malcolm plays Russian roulette with a man, but actually never places the bullet in the chamber, (a nostalgic personal and anecdotal recollection from his past) is tense, funny, and politically and logically relevant as it helps you understand and backs up Malcolms tendency toward theatrics as a key part of who and how he works politically as well as something that can rub people the wrong way. Where is this type of moment in Judas?

Aesthetics can be very powerful covers, they can hide or make it difficult to see what a movie is saying. If they get too distracting they can obstruct us from visualizing or being able to tell just how thin the substance is, or even worse obstruct us completely from seeing or understanding anything else and that extends even to politics. Take for instance the garish make-up on Martin Sheen’s J. Edgar Hoover, its distracting in that it detracts from being able to imbibe Sheen's performance in any real way, and it distracts from the fact that there is not much to the character of Hoover, he like his makeup in this movie - is a cartoon, a caricature of white supremacy. The fact of the matter is you cannot hope to understand any political movement if you don't understand the people or the persons who drive it. The same goes for movies, you can't hope as a director, as a writer, as an actor to understand who your character is if you're not interested in what drives them. In Shaka King's direction there are some wonderful shots, that in and of themselves cause the heart to be stirred, the eye to be pleased, and even connect to a political message, but that is all it does. The same goes for the writing which is full of very clever ways of introducing the basic bullet points of the Panthers messaging, and outlining exactly why the labels they've placed on certain characters (especially the white ones) fit. None of this direction, writing, acting seems to understand or consider rather very much where those ideas sprang from, or why the conditions unique to each person that distinguishes each character from the next, each political actor from the next. When a character named Jake goes off on a bend for revenge, hurt by the loss of his friend, I barely understood it because I had figured out only THEN they were close friends! Where was the bond0, and what made these two any different? The personal and not just the political is exactly why Malcolm X differs from Martin Luther King, and Martin Luther King from Stokely Carmichael, and Stokely Carmichael from Angela Davis, and Angela Davis from Fannie Lou Hamer and so on and so on. The lack of the personal, the private in this movie is why I as much as I want to praise the performances of Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield (who is one of my favorite actors working today) or even Dominique Fishback who plays Hampton's girlfriend Deborah Johnson - to the moon, I find it extremely difficult to praise them in the kinds of ways I think others have and will. All at certain points find interesting moments, but none are ever able to turn those into a full tapestry because there is nothing to which any of these threads belong, no spool of which to wrap themselves around. So then it all becomes all about aesthetics. Sure Daniel's movements can be interesting, sure it can be rousing when intensifies his eyes, tilts his head, mimics Hampton's cadence, but ultimately that's all superficial. None of it means anything if you can't connect it to a singular idea, or a “through line” as actors are sometimes known to call it - as to who Fred Hampton is beyond what his message is, beyond the fact that he's willing to die for his people. Fishback and Plemmons for my money give the best performances in the film, but A. that's not saying much, and B. is because they seem to have a little bit more of an understanding of who their characters are, free from the bondage of a social conceptualization brought about by historical fame or by physical evidence like video recordings, and thusly free from the simplified characterizations, and even that seems shaky at times. Acting cannot survive on physicality alone and that doesn't just mean physical movement but also THEE physical. There has to be some spiritual understanding of what it is you're playing, as well as who it is, to truly transcend, without it these actors seemed like quarterbacks who don't have an offensive line and no one to throw to wildly running around like a chicken with their head cut off, calling audibles, and furiously running from one side of the field to the next trying to make something happen. Many times in the movie I caught Lakeith making faces that were connected to nothing, that felt off and seemed totally out of place. He laughs and almost breaks down simultaneously as he's leaving in his car from yelling at the other Panthers about an informant and it doesn't feel right. It's not necessarily that you don't understand physically/mentally why he's doing it, it's that you don't understand spiritually why he's doing it. That there, is the story of most of this movie not just for the actors before the writers and actors, but for the director there doesn't seem to be a spiritual through line beyond how they want Fred Hampton to be viewed as compared to how they want William O'Neal to be viewed. If the story is truly about the Judas then we really shouldn't be seeing Fred in scenes independent of William. The need to force that comes from a need to force feed the audience an education, and indicates a lack of trust in the viewer or the audience to discern between what William O’ Neal thought of Fred Hampton and who Fred Hampton really was, or maybe even your confidence in being able to pull it off, but the story is there nonetheless. Here is the story of a man who not only was able to turn his back on his people for individual gain as the name “Judas” in the title implies, but also convince himself unconvincingly (as indicated by his suicide) that he was on the right side of History. This particular bit of self brainwashing is not shown to us in the movie mind you, but in the subsequent actual recording of the man from the 1987 documentary “Eyes on the Prize”. What happens there with the actual man is ten times more interesting than anything that happened in film where Lakeith felt the need to over act in order to make up for what the movie lacked in subtext beyond superficial artifice. How, (beyond buying himself suits and shades) did this man convince himself that what he was doing was right? How did he deal with himself in places where he wasn’t being watched? In Mike Newell’s 1997 gangster classic “Donnie Brasco" Johnny Depp's “Joe Pistone” (also based on a real life informant of sorts except he actually works for the cops) is conflicted about the work that he is doing moving between two completely different worlds. What is essentially the third piece to these worlds he's jumping in between that is his family and ultimately it's made very clear that this is the way he washes, and reasons with what he's doing. It's for them, but as the movie goes along we see the further he gets away from one family ( Home or cops) as he trades it in for the other, ( gangsterdom) the further he gets away from that tie and begins to lose himself, there is nothing of ths sort here for William, and nothing of the sort for Hampton who in some ways can be seen as this movies “Lefty Ruggiero”.

One of Judas and the Black Messiah's best moments, (which really even within the moment only lasted for a few moments) tells us of a movie that would have been a much better and more involving movie. Fred begins to read from Deborah's diary without her permission, especially the portion written as Fred was imprisoned. Deborah comes into the room notices Fred reading it and tells him it's private, but as they go along they begin to have a conversation that ask essentially does she regret conceiving his child because of the nature of his work and more specifically the possible consequences. This is the movie that includes or is about Fred Hampton we needed, a movie that would have detailed, and spoken to the strength and the fragility of the relationship between Deborah Johnson and Fred Hampton. A movie that would have contemplated and meditated on the strenuous but none the less clear relationship between the personal and the political. The personal being “I'm bringing a family into this world, I have to look out for my wife, I have to take care of her, and my future child, make sure she's properly cared for and she for me, part of which inherently includes my continued existence” and that with the political, which is that “I have to take care of my community, my friends within the community I've built and ultimately look out for the world in a movement that I'm trying to bring to attention possibly even beyond national borders”. If you must have the William O' Neal angle it should be interested in how he helps further disintegrate the already fragile co-existence of these two pillars of social dynamics. It is through these personal, very private, and in many cases more universal than we think problems that we find the message that politically we seek to breath life into. Returning to the essay, Hanisch goes on to say “It is at this point a political action to tell it like it is to say what I really believe about my life instead of what I've always been told to say”. This after she says “As a movement woman I've been pressured to be strong, selfless, other -oriented, sacrificing and in general pretty much in control of my own life. To admit to the problems in my life is to be deemed weak”. If you apply most of the words the adjectives that she used in this sentence to the movie you get mostly what the movie had to say about Fred Hampton. Take the opposite of many of them and you get William O Neal, but just as Hanisch posits that ultimately these are just ideas of women in the movement, caricatures but not the reality, so too is this framing of Hampton and O'Neal mostly just ideas about who these people were and not the reality, and ideas without the fullness of the human experience rarely make for complete or good movements or movies.