Queen & Slim
Director: Melina Matsoukas
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bokeem Woodbine
Genre: Black times for everyone
Before the cinemas closed and society shut down, I managed to get out to the Dendy Newtown to catch Queen & Slim. It was a timely reminder that for all the pain and stress that the world is going through dealing with Covid-19, it is temporary. There are other issues, also of life and death, that will persist well past the time that Covid-19 becomes as common as the cold and they shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored.
Queen & Slim is a dramatic examination of black America. At its heart it is a simple, almost Bonnie and Clyde story of a black couple running away from the shooting of a white cop resulting from a minor traffic infringement. The bigger picture though is the complexity of relationships within the black community and with and within the white community. There are lots of stereotypes in Queen & Slim (the racist white cop, the gangsta rapper, the PTSD affected Iraq war veteran and more) but they nearly all have important roles to play in telling the tale of black America’s fight for equality.
It was all encapsulated in one quote from Slim, “Why do black people always have to be excellent? Why can’t we just be ourselves?” It rings true for all minorities and goes to the heart of why Queen & Slim is an important film that everyone should watch from the couch when it no doubt gets released to a streaming service soon.
Rating: Four and a half escapes from fantasy.
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