In the opening moments of Miss Juneteenth, the debut feature film of writer and director Channing Godfrey Peoples, a woman is looking through her old dress from a pageant. Accompanying this scene is "Lift Every Voice and Sing", the song often referred to as the "Black national anthem" and written by writer and activist James Weldon Johnson and his brother J. Rosamond Johnson in the early 1900s. This is an obviously very deliberate choice on the part of Peoples and her team, not simply because of its historical importance, but also because of its usage in other forms of art, like the 1989 film Do the Right Thing and Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou looms large in Miss Juneteenth. It is the poem that helped the film's main character, Turquoise Jones (played by Nicole Beharie), win the Miss Juneteenth Pageant in 2004. It seemed her victory would help lead her on to better things, like becoming a doctor or a lawyer, as other winners have. This is not the case for Turquoise, who now is a single mother, working late-night shifts at a bar.Peoples is not concerned about providing her audience every detail about Turquoise and her past. We know that her mother was tough, perhaps abusive. We know that Turquoise gave birth out of wedlock, and it's hinted that she was very young when she became pregnant. We don't exactly know what derailed her plans, other than the pregnancy. But as much as Peoples does not concern herself with giving us all the explanations, Turquoise herself is very much concerned with what happened and how to avoid the mistakes of the past. The opening shots of her, the ones set to "Lift Every Voice and Sing", convey to the audience that nostalgia will be an important element of this story. But it is not simply nostalgia in a good way. We often feel nostalgic when things are not going well; it feels like a necessary part of our ability to persevere. If this nostalgia helps Turquoise keep going, then more power to her. The problem is that we sometimes we become more stressed or depressed when we feel nostalgic. Thus, she strives to have her daughter, Kai (Alexis Chikaeze), follow in her footsteps, but only partly so she doesn't find herself in similar circumstances later in life. Kai, however, is not interested in the pageant. She would prefer to try out for the dance team, but Turquoise doesn't approve. She doesn't even want Kai to do a dance for the competition, but instead recite Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman", as she did.
It seems that one thing after another goes wrong for Turquoise. She has to choose between paying for electricity and paying for the entrance fee for the pageant (which, again, Kai doesn't want to take part in). Turquoise's evangelical mother is disappointed in her, as is (implicitly) most other people, even the ones who are kind to her. "I had high hopes for you, Turquoise," seems to be a reoccuring sentiment. From Kai's perspective, it's one humiliation after another, from celebrating her fifteenth birthday in the dark to wearing casual clothes instead of a fancy dress because her father (Kendrick Sampson) didn't give them the money he had promised.
Both Beharie and Chikaeze are exceptional in Miss Juneteenth. Their acting is marvellous, as are the characters they're playing. Turquoise is an authoritative but caring mother, and both Turquoise and Kai find ways to compromise. That relationship, between mother and daughter, is the heart of the film. And while the film opines from time to time, its opinions are not front and center either. At first it may seem that Peoples is criticizing the Miss Juneteenth Pageant. This is not the case. She has said in interviews that while she was never a Miss Juneteenth herself, she feels nostalgic for the pageant in Texas. Juneteenth was sometimes in the news this year for controversial reasons, and it seemed like this year was the first time many white folks had heard of the holiday. The film is slightly didactic in that a bit of history of the event (celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people) is provided. But it's the characters that the film is most concerned about. The mother and daughter can't always understand each other, but they try, and they look out for one another. Indeed, this is the best mother-daughter film since Wadjda. Like Wadjda,
Miss Juneteenth is directed by a woman and stars women, much like the other best movies of the year, like Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, Saint Frances, and others. I greatly look forward to seeing more work by Peoples, Beharie, and Chikaeze.
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