Strings and Feathers

All We Imagine as Light: Out of India comes one of the most electrifying movies of the year, Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine as Light. A prize winner at Cannes back in May, it tells the story of three women and their different quests for happiness. There’s a lot of plot, but the film makes up for it with its character work and heartwarming relationships, as well as its atmosphere. The lighting, in urban Mumbai and in the beach village that’s the location for the film’s second half, is spectacular, courtesy of the director and filmmaker Ranabir Das.

Prabha (Kani Kusruti) is a middle-aged woman who works as a nurse and has married a man who’s working in Germany, and who she never sees. Her roommate and coworker, Anu (Divya Prabha) is secretly dating a man who’s Muslim. Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) is their friend, a widowed woman who returns to her hometown. In one memorable scene, All We Imagine as Light joins In the Mood for Love as a film in which the delivery of a rice cooker has wide-ranging emotional consequences. The ending is especially moving.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin: Angel Studios, the conservative Christian film studio that released last year’s successful but fraudulent Sound of Freedom, is back with a historical epic, this time exploring the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian of the early-20th century who resisted the Nazis and was executed by that regime on the eve of its collapse. The film, written and directed by Todd Komarnicki—best known for producing Elf and writing Sully—is beautifully mounted, mostly well-acted, and tells the story of a man who was a leading Protestant theologian, took inspiration from the American Black churches and the Harlem Renaissance, and then bravely fought the Nazis. It’s an Angel Studios biopic of a guy who was… Antifa.

I didn’t know much about Bonhoeffer going in, and almost everything I’ve read about him since has made me think that the film misrepresented his story and left out the most interesting parts of it. The film, starring Jonas Dassler in the title role, puts Bonhoeffer much closer to the July 20 plot than he likely really was. His descendants, meanwhile, have denounced the film, declaring that his legacy “is increasingly being distorted and misused by right-wing extremists, xenophobes, and religious agitators.” They also criticized the film’s similarity to the work of Eric Metaxas, who wrote a biography of Bonhoeffer in 2010 that was similarly titled Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

There’s also a debate over whether Bonhoeffer did anything to save Jews at all, which has prevented his inclusion in the Righteous Among the Nations pantheon by Yad Vashem. That, to me, is more compelling than what ended up in the movie.

Bird: The British filmmaker Andrea Arnold came to the U.S. in 2016 to make American Honey, the story of marginalized young people traveling around the Midwest. Now, with Bird, she’s returned to Britain for another bleak tale that’s flawed but contains occasional moments of profundity. Bird is a tour of the slums of Kent, featuring compelling characters plus occasional touches of magical realism that don’t work. Nykiya Adams stars as 12-year-old Bailey, who ping-pongs between a pair of parents (Barry Keoghan and Jasmine Jobson), neither of whom is in any position to care for her. She soon befriends Bird (Franz Rogowski) a local oddball, and helps him search for his parents. Bird reminded me of Billy Bob Thornton’s Sling Blade, in that it’s a child dealing with ugly adult stuff—including a mother’s abusive boyfriend—that’s beyond her capability to handle.

The establishment of this world is impressive, and Keoghan’s tattoos are practically a supporting character themselves. The film makes excellent use of music, including a memorable scene of karaoke singing of Coldplay’s “Yellow.” That said, the film takes a leap near the end that didn’t feel earned.

The Piano Lesson: Almost 10 years ago, Denzel Washington began an ambitious project to adapt all 10 of the plays in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. The project, announced at a time when not a single feature film was made from Wilson’s work, is exactly the kind of swing that I love seeing big movie stars take. The first two movies, Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom were outstanding, with Washington directing and starring in the first, and the second best remembered for Chadwick Boseman’s final screen performance. The Piano Lesson was directed by one of Denzel’s sons, Malcolm Washington, and co-stars another of them, John David Washington.

It’s a strong effort, featuring fine actors—Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher, Danielle Deadwyler, Corey Hawkins, Michael Potts, and Washington—performing Wilson’s dialogue. But while Ma Rainey’s opened up its locations enough to feel like a movie, The Piano Lesson is more like a play. Set in 1936, the film tells the story of the Charles family, and a piano that’s been in the family for years, ever since it was stolen generations earlier from the house where their ancestors were enslaved. Much of the plot concerns an argument over whether Boy Willie (John David) should be allowed to sell the piano to buy a very important piece of land. Samuel L. Jackson is an absolute natural when it comes to speaking August Wilson dialogue.