Director: Ryan Coogler
Writer: Ryan Coogler
Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell
Synopsis: Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.
Ryan Coogler’s syncretic masterwork Sinners combines elements of the Southern Gothic, the diaspora of Black identity, Delta blues, hoodoo and rootwork conjure, Juke joints, sharecropping, prohibition bootlegging, the KKK, and… vampires. Set in a Mississippi town called Clarksdale, which is built on cotton picking for exploitative white landowners in 1932, Sinners explodes genre expectations by embracing multiple folkloric mythologies and tales of the American South.
Author Flannery O’Connor wrote in 1960, “I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” Although she was writing of the tendency for audiences of a certain class and comfort level to be attracted to a literature and history, they could maintain a distance from; while still marveling at the margins they experience vicariously through the tales of “The South,” O’Connor’s observation is prescient in its description of Coogler’s authorial mode in Sinners. In the same essay she continues, “The Southern writer is forced from all sides to make his gaze extend beyond the surface, beyond mere problems, until it touches that realm which is the concern of prophets and poets.” Coogler merges the real social conditions of Mississippi sharecroppers and broken Black communities – traditionally and continually othered in American history with a gaze that opens itself to ecstatic possibilities through rebellion and a sustained belief in self-determination. Although Ryan Coogler himself is Californian, his modality in Sinners embraces the South as a core aspect of the Black experience in creating the historical, contemporary, and future identities of Black Americans.
Twin sons of Clarksdale, Smoke and Stack Moore (Michael B. Jordan) have been absent for years. They fought in the trenches of World War One and then tried their luck as gangsters in Chicago working for Al Capone. In one day and night the ambitions of the brothers to create a Juke joint (Juke itself originally stemming from the Gullah word juk) for the local Black community to gather, turns into an epic fight for survival. It isn’t only a battle for the safety of the people against racist abusers, but one for the survival of the soul conducted outside the confines of Christian dominance. Smoke and Stack are sinners who have given up the idea of redemption through the church run by their Uncle Jedidiah (Saul Williams) and imagine a more earthly garden of delights to uplift the all but in name cottonfield “slaves” still working under white landowners who lynch and burn crosses. The brothers are charming and dangerous tricksters whose braggadocio belies two wounded and intertwined hearts that beat for their Delta home.
Coogler sets the scene with precision and patience. His opening gambit places a bloodied and scarred Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore (newcomer Miles Caton) stumbling into his father’s church clutching the fretboard of a resonator guitar. Jedidiah exhorts his son to finally give up the “Devil’s instrument” and devote his prodigious musical talents to worshipping the lord. As Sammie wordlessly stands shocked and shaken the film goes back a day to fill the audience in on the world of the Devil and sin that Sammie has potentially witnessed.
The arrival of the Smokestack twins back in their hometown sparks several conflagrations. The prodigal sons of Clarksdale have a plan to use their particularly ill-gotten gains from Chicago to make money for and from the town. They buy a disused sawmill from the sneering Hogwood (David Maldonado) and warn him that they will shoot any White man that comes on to the property. Hogwood smiles and assures the brothers that they don’t need to worry about the KKK as that’s “all done with.” Smoke especially understands that the past is never done with and wears the burden slightly more heavily than his younger and more chaotic twin, Stack. They pick up Sammie and go their separate ways preparing for the opening of “Club Juke” which will be the premier barrelhouse offering music, dancing, gambling, food, and drinking.
While Smoke takes care of the money side of the business, bargaining and bartering with Bo (Yao) and Grace (Li Jun Li) Chow, two Chinese Americans who have successfully set up the fresh and dry good groceries in town; Sammie and Stack find the talent who will light up the club. Sammie’s skill as a bluesman is untested for a large audience, but whispers of his skills reverberate around his rural home. Stack introduces him to the old-school jaw harp and piano player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) who is convinced to tickle the ivories with the offer of unlimited Irish Beer. A chance meeting on the train platform where Slim is busking with Stack’s former girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) is hilarious, foulmouthed, and lust-filled, but also speaks to the Jim Crow segregation and anti-miscegenation laws where a woman perceived as White cannot be seen engaging in a sexual relationship with a Black man. Mary isn’t the type to give up, forgive, or forget and with the swagger of a woman who refuses to be denied ensures she will be at Club Juke come hell or highwater. Another beautiful young woman is standing on the platform, the married songbird, Pearline (Jayme Lawson) who has captured Sammie’s young eye and heart.
Slim and Stack educate the eager Sammie on the ways of the wider world, from the joys of cunnilingus to the pains of the chain gang (in an incredible audio sequence which turns Slim’s telling of a lynching into the soundscape of it). Sammie is at a crossroad (a deliberate allusion to the Robert Johnson story) wanting to escape his hardscrabble life and become a dedicated bluesman, which in itself is a hardscrabble life in 1932 but carries with it the dream of becoming legendary. In Coogler’s South (as in the real post-emancipation South) there are few routes of escape and self-determination for Black folk and music is one that promises a self-made and collective legacy.
The other two legacies are money and family. It is these legacies that Smoke struggles to reconcile. He meets with his ex-lover and mother of his deceased child, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) a Hoodoo conjurer and rootworker who fears that Smoke is once again hurtling into danger that her mojo bag and prayers cannot save him from. Their pent-up desire for each other is as palpable as the pain that has separated them. Annie agrees to be the cook at Club Juke if only to keep her on her beloved. Smoke convinces a soon-to-be father, Cornbread (Omar Miller) to act as the bouncer for the club and the night of their collective lives is coming together. What none of them expect is that night they will be fighting for their lives against a centuries-old Irish vampire named Remmick (Jack O’Connell) who hungers to create his own mind-controlled flock of the undead.
Ryan Coogler throws so many references and subplots within Sinners it can be dizzying just to keep up. The vampires, which at first would appear to be the core story, become almost a set-piece subplot to illustrate the voracious appetites of those who crave ownership over individual cultures through violent means. Coogler has Remmick waiting in the background seeking to feast on Club Juke after a failed attempt to “convert” Mississippi Choctaws. He quite easily finds his way into the home of Klan members Bert (Peter Dreimanis) and Ruth (Lola Kirke) who later turn up at the door of Club Juke asking for entry and playing Irish folksongs. Coogler adheres to vampire lore that the revenants must be invited in. The friendly and “brotherly” demeanor of Remmick soon turns sour as he speaks of another “Brotherhood” who will arrive to erase the revelers in the club.
Although bloody and action filled, the vampire attack is nothing compared to what precedes it. A musical sequence which is so ecstatic it reaches through time connecting Sammie’s pure bluesman’s voice with the rhythms and songs of shamans, tribal priests, rappers, DJs, futuristic guitar players, and Chinese Kunqu performers. The spectacle shot by Autumn Durald Arkapaw, edited by Michael P. Shawver, scored by Ludwig Göransson and choreographed by Aakomon Jones represents not only the finest set piece of Coogler’s film, but also the essence of the erotic, wild, and unburdened freedom of expression that creates a resonant guiding rhythm that pulsates beyond all worldly limits.
It would be hard to find a film quite like Sinners in contemporary blockbuster fare because few creators would be brave enough to attempt such a wild and potentially unwieldy cinematic behemoth. It is particularly difficult to make a genre-busting horror/action/musical/historical fiction piece and sustain characters that people care about. Improbably and impressively, Ryan Coogler has done it. Collaborating with his longtime leading man, Michael B. Jordan, and entrusting him with two distinct roles as the Smokestack twins more than pays off as Jordan creates believably different and inextricably connected men each striving for a “home” to protect. Hailee Steinfeld and Wunmi Mosaku each inhabit their characters as women who are not adjuncts to the men they love but are filled with their own desire and reasons for needing connection. Delroy Lindo and Omar Miller add levity (and tragedy) to their characters. Jack O’Donnell’s vampire certainly kissed the Blarney Stone when it comes to offering a “life without pain” in eternal night – it will only cost your “self”.
Sinners is a lot to take in and it keeps pushing boundaries until Coogler has the audience in their own timeless revelry. Could the film have been tighter and more focused? Absolutely. Should it have been? Probably. But the massive scale of the movie is what makes it touch “that realm which is the concern of prophets and poets.” Sweaty, sultry, and seductively Southern – Sinners is an ambitious masterpiece that raises roofs and burns brightly as it thrums with its infectious rhythm.
