There's a silly problem with
Small Ax
, the new play by London-based filmmaker Steve McQueen.
Let us warn;
It is not your typical television series.
Nor does the definition of the BBC sound good: an
anthology
.
Technically, we are facing a pentalogy: five stories slightly connected but united by the will of their creator.
Five films that last between 63 and 128 minutes.
Heterogeneous films: a courtroom drama (
Mangrove
), a musical (
Lovers Rock
), a police sketch (
Red, White and Blue
), a
biopic
(
Alex Wheatle
), a social melodrama (
Education
).
As protagonists, we have authentic characters from the Afro-Caribbean minority in the United Kingdom, plus some memories of McQueen himself (London, 1969).
Powerful stories that have never been brought to the screen, except in documentaries and glances.
For obvious reasons: They reflect the soft racism of the host society, a racism that was hardened when it came to the police, who were given (or credited with) the role of keeping boisterous newcomers at bay.
This urge to rescue some unknown experiences seems to have catalyzed the director and his accomplices.
There's something measurably titanic about McQueen's effort (five films finished in the middle of the pandemic!), Who has even collaborated with lead writers, Courttia Newland and Alastair Siddons.
And that he has managed to transmit his passion to an extraordinary cast: apart from John Boyega (you know, Finn in
Star wars
), most of the actors are unknown to us but they reveal themselves to be formidable as those who could be their parents or their grandparents !
The title,
Small Ax
, refers to an angry song recorded by producer Lee Perry with the Wailers: between biblical verses, Bob Marley is presented as the small ax that, when properly sharpened, can even knock down large trees.
At first, it was a warning to the gangsters who controlled the business of recorded music in Jamaica, but, evidently, its message became universal.
Small Ax is
brimming with music, selected with taste and knowledge.
Reggae dominates, but there's also soul, pop, and lots of Jim Reeves, a reminder of Jamaica's devotion to
country
.
And calypso, as befits the origin of Frank Crichlow and several of his friends from the Mangrove restaurant, born in Trinidad and Tobago.
Music could be an escape route for those savvy immigrants:
Red, White and Blue
represents Leee John, vocalist and founding member of Imagination, a very popular trio in Spain in the eighties.
It turns out that Leee was a friend of Leroy Logan, a stubborn man who quit his job in a laboratory for the most hated profession among the Caribbean population: police.
The pinnacle of
Small Ax is
perhaps
Lovers Rock
, which is lacking in politics and, apparently, in script.
In truth, it belongs to that subgenre of musical cinema colloquially known as let's-go-mount-a-show.
Only here it is about what Jamaicans call a
blues party
: a house is cleared so that it can accommodate the attendees, who pay to enter and for the food and drink they consume.
We also see how a
sound system
is installed
, which will take care of animating the party.
And no, at a
blues party you
don't play blues.
This is another example of the linguistic inventiveness of Jamaicans, who also call
the guy who uses the microphone to speak / sing
deejay
, in preference to instrumental backgrounds.
Likewise, there is nothing rock in the style called
lovers rock
, which we could call the romantic branch of reggae.
It was the favorite music of young girls with Jamaican roots and McQueen invents a tremendous trance, when the song
Silly games,
by Janet Kay
ends
, and they continue singing, lost in that ecstatic promise of love.
A magical scene but, wait, it still hasn't been resolved.
Soon after, the
wildest
dub
begins to bounce
and the men fill the floor, dancing wildly.
It is easy to believe that we are contemplating that exciting and terrifying moment when a party is out of whack.
There is tension in the environment, but the foreseeable violence is not unleashed, thanks to the abundance of
ganja
cigarettes
and the tutelage of temperate people.
There you decide that, indeed, we are not seeing another
qualité
production
from the BBC.
It is true that McQueen has a bull there.
He has squeezed in thick
Jamaican
Patois
in some situations and allowed himself to slow down the action with silent still shots, sometimes enigmatic: During a raid by vandalism
bobbies
, a sieve that oscillates for an entire minute falls to the ground.
Steve McQueen defends the theory that, once fifty years have elapsed, memory fades and the filmed events become period films, with their burden of nostalgia and the consequent automatic allocation of good and bad.
This is not the case here: everything has balance.
The setting, for example, of the Brixton of the eighties is prodigious, from what I can remember of visits to that neighborhood: from hairstyles and clothes to the decoration of record stores.
Brixton appears in
Alex Wheatle
, initially a delicate matter.
The homonymous character is now a recognized writer;
in fact, he was part of the writing team.
There is nothing heroic about the portion of his biography recounted here: raised as a Dickensian orphan, he suffers abuse and lands in Brixton as a dummy, even taught to walk with the proper attitude to scare away the wolves.
With his bad leg, he is arrested in what is known as the "Brixton uprising" in 1981. Condemned to prison, he is fortunate enough to meet a
friendly
Rastafarian
in the cell
, who invites him to read
The Black Jacobins
, by historian CLR James.
The first step to mental emancipation.
McQueen masterfully solves those riots, preceded by a terrifying fire in a
blues party
that caused 13 deaths, He does it with still photos, recitations of the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and a staging of the clashes between police and protesters that suggests a medieval battle.
* Small Ax
is available at Movistar +.
The latest installments are released on Thursday, January 28 (
Alex Wheatle
) and Thursday, February 4 (
Education
).