DOUBLE FEATURE 11.13.20
Chadwick Boseman, Gregory Peck, Sterling K. Brown
If one were to give a required course in America’s struggle with racism it should include this double feature. Both films are absolute winners in being immensely provoking and both are masters of storytelling. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most important films ever made and it teaches us, through Gregory Peck‘s Oscar performance as Atticus Finch in his parenting of Scout and her brother Jem, how to walk around in someone else’s shoes, have the courage to fight for what is decent, and extend empathy and understanding to everyone. This film carries so many lessons maybe we should watch it once a year.
Moving up north from the deep south and many decades later to Bridgeport, Connecticut, is a very smartly directed film starring Chadwick Boseman as a young very able lawyer named Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall became the first person of color to serve on the Supreme Court. The film is Marshall and is based on a true story. Marshall’s defense of an innocent man, Sterling K. Brown, of rape of a white woman is mesmerizing. It is an overlooked film and works perfectly on every level. The accused is charged with the exact same crime in each film and the only difference you see in the beginning of the trial is that black people can now sit downstairs in the courtroom and not be segregated to the upstairs balcony. The accused is also innocent in both cases.
Both films leave you with a sense of horror and hope, and a belief that change is coming and a determination that it has to come. This change toward becoming decent human beings is moving more slowly than we want as we are continuing to witness the horrific treatment of people of color in this country today. There is systemic racism and this particular American racism has a deeply seeded resistance to change. Change is fueled by many things and these two films both contributed to providing Americans and the world with a mirror with which to look upon the ugly racist underbelly of America and begin to awaken from a being inactive and asleep in the fight for social justice. We need to keep messaging through any art form the call to wake up and pursue change as these films did.
