Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America

Whenever there is a horrifying moment in the United States of America related to race, there sometimes is a knee-jerk reaction to it. "That's not who we are," is more or less the usual refrain. For conservatives, this "isn't who we are" because, regardless of what people of color have told everyone about their experiences, racism is simply a case of a few bad apples. Liberals, however, though they mean well, are often ignorant of history. One would hear a lot of white liberals shout "this isn't who we are!" when the Trump administration would put children in cages, apparently oblivious of the fact that so much of the history of the United States features such ugly episodes. 

Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America is a documentary that aims to tear apart both fallacies. It's a film that is similar to An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary featuring Al Gore's presentation attempting to alarm audiences of the reality of global warming. In a similar style, Who We Are splits between a presentation with a fancy PowerPoint by Jeffrey Robinson, a former deputy director the ACLU and the founder of the Who We Are Project, and personal anecdotes about Robinson's own experiences with racism mixed with interviews with the mothers of Black men killed by the police. Many of these moments, whether they be the interviews with these mothers or Robinson talking with a white coach at his Catholic school who tried to protect him from racism, are powerful, as is much of Robinson's more objective presentation, which details what he calls tipping points, moments when the United States (as he puts it) moved one step forward and three back in terms of racial justice and fairness. For example, Reconstruction and the civil rights laws of the nineteenth century were replaced by Jim Crow, and the gains from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s were diminished by harmful policies that followed, such as the War on Drugs. 

As one can imagine, the documentary very much is a history lesson. On tours, Robinson shows viewers the silent yet horrifying reminders of racism in the country, from the fingerprints of enslaved people in bricks, to trees still standing where Black people were lynched and hanged from, to the steps of what used to be Black Wall Street in Tulsa before the infamous slaughter in 1921. Other usual beats are there, such as the Electoral College's racist origins, the racist lyrics of the "Star-Spangled Banner," The Birth of a Nation, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Fernando Wood, and the fight to remove statues paying tribute to Confederate traitors and slavers. During his presentation, he includes a passage from the South Carolina Slave Code of 1740, which outlined that "the slave may be kept in due subjugation and obedience." His point is that the laws of the United States have often been a fundamental component of anti-Black racism in the United States. "The law picked a side," he tells his audience. 

If there is a problem with the film, it is that it is too similar in style to An Inconvenient Truth (so much so that it could have alternatively been titled "An Inconvenient Truth About Racism"). Beyond that, the documentary (like many others similar to it) preaches to the choir. In one scene, Robinson discusses the causes of the Civil War when he sees a pro-Confederate flag rally. Chatting with an older white man, Robinson does circles around him and his lack of logic, to the point where the other man seems to concede that if Robinson were to enslave the white guy, he would be okay with that (as long as he were to be treated "like family"). The white guy is wearing sunglasses, but his facial expression is basically emotionless; it's clear he just wants this to end. Despite likely being exposed to different (and obviously stronger) arguments, the man does not recant his original position. The war was fought because of economic reasons, he maintains, and it was not due to slavery (which was, again according to him, okay in many instances because the enslaved people were often treated as family). Robinson gets back into the vehicle and is completely exhausted. "Facts were not that important to this gentleman," he says. 

But that's a frustrating thing about Who We Are. Few of the many white people who disapprove of Black Lives Matter or the only twenty-five percent of white people who think that people of color are treated more harshly by the police are likely to see this documentary, and those who do are unlikely, I believe, to have their opinions be changed. The movie works for its audience (those who already walk into the film agreeing with Robinson) because these are the arguments that have always worked for this group. For the other group, their arguments are simpler: the United States is not racist—end of discussion. They can hardly be blamed for thinking that; it is, after all, how many of them have been taught to view racism in this nation. Green Book won Best Picture only three years ago because many people (even those infamously pesky liberals in Hollywood) still think that racism only existed in the South, it ended in 1968, and the solution to it is to simply put white people with people of color, and the problems will magically disappear.  

This is probably most notable when Robinson plays excerpts from Donald Trump's infamous remarks confusing Andrew Jackson and the Civil War. Robinson pauses, then points out how a few things there are a little problematic. The audience laughs. He then goes on to explain the reasons why this is problematic—how Jackson had died long before the war had started, how Jackson had enslaved people—but it doesn't matter. The choir likely already was aware of the weird and ignorant way Trump would praise Jackson; those who (literally) still adore Jackson and think he was a populist "man of the people" probably will think that they, too, are being laughed at, and will likely turn it off by that point.

Who We Are is a good documentary. It's an important documentary. It's a documentary many (especially younger people) really ought to see. But the target audience should actually be people who would be more vulnerable to falling for these notions that racism "isn't really who we are," that it's not a part of this country's DNA. They are the ones who need to hear these arguments and understand the reality of the situation. The film will, however, likely fall flat for them.  

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Till the Clouds Roll By

It was surprising to me that when Lin-Manuel Miranda and his team decided to release Hamilton on Disney+ earlier this month, it was not a musical adaptation as is typically the case in Hollywood, but instead a filmed version of the staged show in 2016. This seems like a risky way to adapt the famous musical, but it worked. Marian Watts noted in Newsweek that the approach Hamilton took to adapt the musical for the screen was successful, whereas the 2004 film The Phantom of the Opera was not, comparing the latter to an overstuffed painting. 

Till the Clouds Roll By, the 1946 MGM musical based on the life of Broadyway composer Jerome Kern, tries to take the Hamilton route, but it is much more of a Phantom. It's not a musical adaptation of anything, but its musical numbers are all staged productions of some of his most famous hits, like "How'd You Like to Spoon With Me" and "Ol' Man River," and neither the numbers nor the scenes of dialogue are particularly interesting.

Indeed, at first it seems that that's all it will be: some kind of collection of uninspiring numbers, one after the other failing to excite. anyone other than music history lovers. Some of these songs are immortal, but none of them are compelling to watch in this film, directed by Richard Whorf and produced by Arthur Freed (who once exposed himself to a twelve-year-old Shirley Temple). The musical numbers are boring, even the ones featuring Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, Lena Horne, and Frank Sinatra. All the star power couldn't help this film stay afloat. 

Many critics at the time. Bosley Crowther at the New York Times questioned why such a film should be made. "Why quibble about the story?" is how Variety put it. That's a very good question. While relatively more recent biographical films of famous musicians, like Ray or Walk the Line, may share a similar sense of being unnecessary, at least there are stakes in those films. Those musicians' stories featured real rises and falls. No such drama exists in Till the Clouds Roll By, an overly sentimental yawn that goes on and on for 132 minutes in an era in which the average full-length motion picture was between 90 and 100 minutes. With all due respect to Kern, in terms of an engaging story, he was no Ray Charles or Johnny Cash.  

Kern is played by Robert Walker. Trying to climb the musical ladder in an era when England ruled Broadway, he travels across the Atlantic, where he meets lots of English people who speak with American accents, like a lady he falls for named Eva (played by Dorthy Patrick). Walker and Patrick may have at least some chemistry, but it's the bare minimum. After some time in the middle of the film in which he respectfully woos her (except for when he tells her she's "pretty for a working girl"), the two flirt and banter and eventually marry. 

Then she more or less disappears from the film, ceding again to focus on the real relationship of the film: the songwriting partnership between Kern and James Hessler (Van Heflin), a fictional character, but their relationship isn't much more interesting. We see these two grow "a little grayer," but we're never given a reason to care. The film tries to add some element of drama by having Salling, Hessler's daughter, grow up to become a singer. Kern writes a song for her, but the producer of the show thinks the song should be sung by real-life actress Marilyn Miller (Garland). Sally, played by Lucille Bremer, is heartbroken, jealous, and disillusioned, and she's treated paternalistically by "Uncle Jerry," so much so that she runs off. A few minutes are devoted to Kern's search for her, mostly in the form of a montage of men shaking their heads "no," presumably to answer if they know her whereabouts. But she eventually shows up in unremarkable fashion. Hurray!

Till the Clouds Roll By is a disappointing and tremendously boring biographical film, one that often feels awkward and clumsy. These sort of films are almost always tedious, bu this one is especially so. It doesn't help that most of the non-singing cast is not putting much effort into it. It takes about an hour and a half before Garland appears. She sings a few numbers by Vincent Minnelli, her husband at the time. Her voice always is exceptional, even if the material she is singing is not. Till the Clouds Roll By would have been much more interesting from her perspective instead of from that of Jerome Kern. 

This article was originally published at the Public Domain Film Review, found here.  

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Hit the Road

If films really are a machine for empathy, as Roger Ebert once said, then that would surely apply to the film Hit the Road from Iran written and directed by Panah Panahi, a road movie that will show many audience members that their chaotic, argumentative, sometimes fraught road trips involving fighting parents, annoying children, and a sick dog might be universal facts of life in any country. 

What kind of a road trip is it? It's a little more complicated that the average family vacation. Some viewers might find this brilliant, while others may find it frustrating, but Hit the Road is incredibly patient, particularly in its first thirty minutes. In the opening scenes, a family of four is on a road trip. Everything appears normal, although the parents seem a bit paranoid. The mother (Pantea Panahiha) scolds their mischievous young boy (Rayan Sarlak) for sneaking their father's cell phone on the trip. The boy humorously insists that he requires the phone for important phone calls he's expecting. It's such a big deal, though, that the mother has their older son (Amin Simiar) pull over so she can hide the phone on the side of the road for them to retrieve on their way back. That's a bit peculiar for a family road trip, no? At another point, she whispers that she thinks they're being followed. They are, but it's by another driver who's been trying to tell them that their car is leaking. 

So much of Hit the Road takes place in the family's car on their way to a destination that is never fully explained, certainly not to the young boy, who remains blissfully ignorant about just about everything that is happening, probably because of his constantly high energy, sucking the oxygen out of the car practically every time. 

In or out of the car, the actors are fantastic. It's hard to choose a favorite performance of the four because they all act so terrifically. Simiar as the older brother has a mystery to his acting; he cleverly guards what could be described as enormous internal turmoil that is kept from the viewer for most of the film. Hassan Madjooni, as the indolent father likely wishing to make everything appear perfectly normal, submits an effortless and masterful performance. He sits there, apparently helpless as his leg is broken, muttering a few lines of morbid humor here and there and calling his boys monkeys. Did he fall? Yes, he tells someone, he "fell from grace." He has most of the funny moments in the film. Finally, I'm amazed at how Panahi got such an exceptional performance from such a young performer like Sarlak; maybe Panahi's notes were simple, like "be more annoying," but Sarlak makes it work. His performance is so naturalistic, much more than most of what we typically see in Hollywood productions. His acting here is comparable to Waad Mohammed in Wadjda, Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project, Jacob Tremblay in Room, and Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine, which Tomris Laffly drew parallels to. 

And finally, there is probably my favorite performance: Panahiha, the mother. Panahiha demonstrates mastery of a variety of various difficult tasks for an actor. She has to shift from so many different emotional highs and lows, and nothing, it seems, is in her control. "Nothing but lies," she finally lets out, when it's just her, the older boy, and her husband. (The young one has gone to menace passengers on a bus.)  

Panahi is the son of Iranian New Wave director Jafar Panahi, who has continued to be prohibited by the government from making films. You might have seen his documentary from 2011 called This Is Not a Film, which was smuggled out of Iran in a flash drive hidden inside a cake. As already mentioned, the younger Panahi's script (though a little too obsessed with urine) is very patient in revealing what's actually going on, and even then it's not entirely clear, though things do become more and more interesting as it progresses. Some patience is therefore required, but it's worth the ride.    

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