Racism can be more dramatic in real life
There is currently an op-ed in a local paper about a proposed rezoning for schools describing students at Calvin Donaldson Elementary as “sluggards” and claiming that “goats and sheep” don’t mix. It’s important to note that Calvin Donaldson serves primarily students from Alton Park and nearly 95 percent of its students are people of color.
We are less than a month into a new decade, a time when we thought there might be flying cars and colonized planets, but instead the South remains covered with old racist white men who cannot hide their derision at the idea of “those people” attending an affluent school.
It doesn’t matter that the author is incorrect—the students rezoned for Lookout Mountain will overwhelmingly come from the wealthier sections of St. Elmo. Articles like this one, and others which seem to flow like sewage from that publication, should anger all of us.
But most will ignore it. Some will shout about it online before moving to some new outrage. But none will challenge the ideas in any meaningful way.
Just Mercy is a film about that silence, more specifically the pervasive silence we all share in the face of injustice, and how a small group of people can challenge it.
Bryan Stephenson (Michael B. Jordan) is young man from Delaware, a new graduate from Harvard Law School, who has passed the Alabama State Bar and set up a foundation to assist death row inmates who have never had adequate legal representation.
Just Mercy is a film that challenges the very ideas behind the death penalty and those that seek to use it a means to punish men for the color of their skin.
The story follows Stephenson as he works to free Walter “Johnny D” MacMillian (Jamie Foxx), who was convicted in 1982 for killing a white woman in a laundromat in Monroeville, Alabama.
For those unfamiliar, Monroeville was the home of Harper Lee, who wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird”. The residents are quite proud of this, frequently prompting Stephenson to visit the Mockingbird Museum with no small sense of irony.
MacMillian was convicted solely on the testimony of felon Ralph Barnard Myers (Tim Blake Nelson), despite having been at a fish fry with dozens of witnesses at the time of the murder, one of whom was a police officer. Over the course of the film, Stephenson must confront the hopelessness of the situation and the blindness of the system to its own injustice.
Performances are exceptional all around. Tim Blake Nelson in particular, who has deserved all the acting awards for years. Jordan and Foxx continue to shine, as they always do. In terms of filmmaking, the movie plays it safe. It’s feels very by the numbers and is, of course, elevated by the cast.
Destin Daniel Cretton has a smattering of shorts under his belt and a lone feature, The Glass Castle, from 2017. This means that he’s ripe for the picking for direction of a Marvel film and is in fact slated for one—Shang-Chai and the Legend of the Ten Rings in 2021. Here’s hoping he takes a few risks in his next film.
This isn’t to say Just Mercy is average. It’s a complex story that’s well told. But it still feels like a very standard lawyer drama set in the South. We’ve seen it before. Perhaps some of this feeling is because the film is based on actual events but more than likely it’s because we’ve seen many movies like this one.
Still, the subject is an important one. Be it the death penalty, the economy, housing, or yes, even school zoning, every aspect of life in the South is affected by race. To claim that it isn’t, to claim that this separation no longer exists, or isn’t valid, is ignoring the very foundations on which American society was formed.
America was borne of both darkness and light. The consequences of that darkness still exist today in every corner of the country. Those that fought against equal rights are still here. Some of them write opinion articles for local papers. Some of them actively work against equality.
Luckily, there are people like Bryan Stephenson. His story is one to emulate.