“Sinners”
Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is a gorgeous film, with scenes of austere beauty and gore. No one does better with an isolated building about to be assaulted by either racists or vampires, who are, effectively, parallel perversions. Coogler clears the space around the structure, so that you can clearly see the advancing assault. Step by step. Inch by inch. Coogler is the genius who gave us Wakanda in the Black Panther movies of 2018 and 2022. He seems to have a genius for the penetrating image, the one that lodges like a stake in the heart. I learned about Afro-Futurism from Coogler, the Black techno-history that might have been.
“Sinners” is many different kinds of movie: a sketch of small-town Mississippi in the 30s, an essay on political and cultural disruption, especially in the wake of the First World War, and not incidentally a first-rate horror movie, with plenty of spurting, oozing blood. Fountains of blood. Pools of blood. Scenes of literal baptism by blood. You will no doubt be reminded of another horror movie, “Get Out,” where the Black characters are set upon by perverted White people and transformed into servile, yes-ma’am automatons in a dungeon operating room, purpose-built by the damned.
The idea in that film, and this one by Coogler, is that racism is deep and dark and eternal. We could be talking about the Jews and anti-Semitism, and the persistence of an old and potent hostility. White people never relent, let alone atone. If there is a difference, it’s the final destination. The purpose of history in “Get Out” is erasure, to eliminate the taint of Black originality and differentness. In “Sinners” the goal is to appropriate Black culture, to take its music, its art, and its mystery, and make it part of the majority experience. The exhausted forms of Irish step-dancing have to be rejuvenated by an vital infusion of the Harlem Lindy Hop. As the character, Delta Slim, meaningfully intones, the White folks like the blues just fine. They just don’t like the people who sing them.
Coogler’s evoction of that culture is the other half of his achievement. In one swirling scene of marvelous invention, he shows that African dance, the sinuous delights of clubbing, and a future world of electric funk are all part of the same continuum. It’s an Ernie Barnes “Sugar Shack” painting come to life, with quotations from history, before and after. He blends them together in a romantic set piece of nostalgia where Blackness is a great and mighty stream.
And it is a stream that he wants passionately to protect. The vampires offer the Black characters eternal life. Join us, they say, and we will protect you. Our music will merge. Our stories will blend. But Coogler rejects the lure of assmilation. Even if it promises a version of refuge, it is a false and dangerous proposition. In order to live out the destiny of Blackness, it needs to exist vital and distinct.