Reading The Black Guy Dies First (review tomorrow) prompted me to watch a couple of films this weekend that the book commended for treating voudou well. First up, LORD SHANGO (1975).
This is nowhere near as lurid as the poster implies. In the opening (set in the present-day South) a Shango-worshipping young man tries to stop his lover from accepting Christian baptism, snarling that it’s colonizer religion. In the subsequent fight, he’s drowned. She grows distraught and the movie follows her and her mother’s attempt to deal with their grief and the lingering conflict between the Baptist faith and the church of Shango (which despite the book’s recommendation does pull off a couple of magic-powered deaths). This is interesting more than entertaining. “I can’t feel anything — that was Shango’s price.”
EVE’S BAYOU (1997) is a much superior film. Jussie Smollett plays the title Louisiana girl, daughter of womanizing physician Samuel L. Jackson whose flaws Eve is only gradually starting to see. It’s a gentle drama about growing up, with voodoo and psychic powers (it’s one of those that treats them as interchangeable) merely part of the everyday background. I do have a problem with their handling of an incest scene late in the book, which I thought was badly handled (including keeping it ambiguous what exactly happened). That aside, an excellent film. “You should not sneak up on someone when they’re swearing to themselves.”
By coincidence, TYG and I went to see SINNERS (2025) the same weekend and holy crap, it’s every bit as good as I’d heard. In 1932, two Mississippi black brothers (both Michael B. Jordan), back from Chicago with money to spend, set up a blues club, and recruit banjo player Miles Caton as one of the musicians (and one brother’s ex, the root-magic practicing Annie [Wummi Musaku], as the cook]. It’s a dicey job given they have to avoid pissing off local whites. Then, 30 or 40 minutes into the movie, a group of very strange white musicians show up, saying they’d like to play — will you please invite them inside? Please.
The movie shifts from a Southern drama about race and music to an increasingly nightmarish vampire thriller to a very violent horror film. It works in all modes (you could also argue it works as a musical — TYG downloaded the soundtrack as soon as it ended), thanks to director Ryan Coogler. As in the other films, Annie’s magic is extremely low-key. “We’ll be on our way … walking very slowly.”
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