Note: the author of this review watched Judas and the Black Messiah on a digital screen From home. Before making the decision to see it – or any other film – in the cinema, consider the health risks involved. Here it is an interview on the subject with scientific experts.
It is hard to overstate the cultural upheaval of the late 1960s. Americans had a small taste of the political chaos of the era in 2020, but for many, this experience was mitigated by the dissociative effect of watching life unfold on a smartphone screen. And events are still going on, moreover. The agitation of the 1960s was sustained, organized and direct, and groups like the Black Panthers, with their commitment to solidarity and mutual aid, represented a tangible threat to white supremacy in this country – even white supremacy, in the form of the FBI ended with the revolution before it could really start.
In terms of reporting this story, Judas and the Black Messiah it is relatively simple. It is framed by a character’s familiar device giving an interview, and anchored by the quintessence of human experiences: a love story. Director Shaka King takes a novelistic approach to the material, focusing less on the relationship between the two title characters and more on what was happening in Chicago at the time when FBI informant William O’Neill (LaKeith Stanfield) infiltrated the Illinois Black Panther Party in 1968. Those who expect a climactic confrontation between the exciting leading actors in the film will not find it here, because, well, it wasn’t like that in real life. But there is still a lot of dramatic friction to be found.
As president of the Illinois party, Fred Hampton, Daniel Kaluuya is the sun around which everything else Judas and the Black Messiah rotates. Hampton recruits new members, joins warring factions and, with his radical charisma and platform, scares FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen). The activist really comes to life in front of a crowd, while Kaluuya channels the searing intensity he brought to Steve McQueen Widows for fairer but equally electrifying purposes. Even offstage, however, the sturdy Hampton rarely let his guard down, which makes his connection with lover and fellow weapon Deborah (Dominique Fishback) so special. She knows how to reach him the way he reaches the audience, and Fishback’s softness balances Kaluuya’s unwavering strength for a moving effect.
Compared to Hampton, O’Neill is a rat running through a burning maze, desperate, fearful and eternally reactive. Stanfield’s performance is equally elusive. On the other hand, Bill is a talented liar who manages to get into Hampton’s inner circle without breaking the character. On the other hand, he is nervous, excitable and unable to hide his emotions when placed under intense pressure. But while Stanfield and Kaluuya offer two attractive and contrasting performances, Judas and the Black Messiah it is an ensemble piece with no weak links, only secret weapons.
The opposite physicality of the film’s protagonists is just a way that King shows, instead of telling. At one point, a cut from O’Neill’s dark, cramped room for the luxurious suburban digs of his FBI handler, Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), demonstrates his imbalance of power without a line of dialogue. (Plemons is a stunt in a movie full of them, a perfectly milquetoast representation of the true face of white supremacy.) Just as Mitchell did with O’Neill, the information is hidden from the characters and distributed in fragments. And as the tension increases, so does the impression of a trap being built and placed somewhere out of sight. It is an elegant and subtle dramatization of institutional racism and how it works.
King also shows talent for juxtaposition in his transitions between scenes, using them to emphasize points and add small moments of ironic humor to this otherwise serious story. (Early on, we see archival footage of Hampton talking about free breakfast for kids, before a stiff cut for Hoover declaring dramatically: “TThe Black Panthers are the biggest threat to our national security. ”Free breakfast! The horror!) His confident direction keeps the camera moving, and the free-jazz track by composers Craig Harris and Mark Isham matches the period and adds more nervous energy to Chicago’s already explosive atmosphere. The Windy City shown in this film is not a city of skyscrapers and a big lake, but of modest brick dwellings, shady alleys and industrial courtyards spewing toxic smoke into the air breathed by children who live blocks away.
Hampton’s son, Fred Hampton Jr., and his mother, Deborah Johnson (who later changed her name to Akua Njeri), worked as consultants in Judas and the Black Messiah, and the film is certainly an admirable portrait of the Black Panthers. But King and co-writers Will Berson and Keith and Kenneth Lucas (also known as comedy duo The Lucas Brothers) add layers to this already complicated story, extending just a little bit of sympathy to O’Neill (he was also caught in a trap) and leaving Mitchell in conflict over his role in the eventual assassination of Hampton. Both the militant and the humanitarian side of the Panthers are on display here, and if the Chicago Police Department is portrayed in a vile light, history confirms this too. In fact, the fact that this film looks unnerving and relevant 50 years later shows how right Fred Hampton was. You can kill a person, but you cannot kill an idea.