Friends, lovers, sinners all: see this movie. Jett and Gareth take on Ryan Coogler’s sprawling, multifaceted Sinners and the reasons it feels bigger than a single successful film. What does it reveal about genre, popular cinema, authorship, and the kinds of ambitious movies audiences might still demand?
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0:20
Gareth and Jett’s Introduction
Oh my goodness, friends, friends and lovers.
I say lovers because there's so much love in the film we're gonna talk about today. Sinners, folks, I have to tell ya, I'm an old man. When I was a very small child, saw Star Wars in the theater.
That scene, the opening scene with the giant star destroyer blew people's minds years later, 99. We're doing a time jump from 77 to 99. The Matrix, the bullet time sequence blew people's minds.
With this film Sinners, we have a sequence which is every bit as revolutionary when it comes to commercial filmmaking as those scenes, but it's even deeper and richer. We're talking about Sinners, a complex multifaceted masterwork.
Welcome to The Film Talk. I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. The Conversation never ends. And yes, Sinners is the crowd pleasing film, certainly of the year, maybe of, I don't know how long is an era?
How long is an era?
I think this starts a new era. I think this is just like The Matrix changed things in Star Wars.
This is the era that was, we have ended the era that was inaugurated by The Matrix. There's a 26 year era.
Well, historically, there's different eras. I haven't really thought about it, but for me, time is a flat circle. We got to get to a clip.
1:40
The Film
You also got to tell the listeners that haven't seen Sinners, what it is.
But for me, this inaugurates a new era because it can show people, it shows the suits and people and audience goers that you can have a blockbuster commercial film that plays in theaters, it has a love of theaters that actually is about something.
Absolutely. More than one thing, could be about 20 things.
It isn't just sketching the headlines of that thing, it is substantiating and embodying that thing Sinners.
Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, who is most known for the two Black Panther films, but also made Creed in his first film, Fruitvale Station with his constant collaborator, Michael B. Jordan.
It's about twin Black brothers who returned to Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932 after, I guess we could call it a sojourn in Chicago. They're flush with cash. I'm not so sure that the cash was honorably obtained and they're ready to open a juke joint.
They've come back to Clarksdale because as they say, Chicago is just as racist as the South. It's a plantation of skyscrapers and they want to build a life among the people in the place that they know.
This film takes place over the course of 24 hours or so as they prepare their juke joint for opening and they have opening night. That's the premise of this film. There's one rogue variable, Jett, one rogue variable that they hadn't banked on.
That is...
Salma Hayek doing a dance.
Oh, no. It's Riverdance and what Riverdance can do if you're not adequately prepared to protect yourself from Riverdance.
It's Riverdance as if... What is his name? Michael Flatley?
As if he was a...
Klos Kinski.
And a 1920s radical socialist.
There are vampires, and that's sinners, and I believe we have a clip.
We do have a clip. Friends, dear listeners, lovers, if you've seen Fright Night, you'll get the dynamic in this clip. With the old traditional vampires stories, you have to be...
They have to be invited into your home, right? They can't just waltz in. So like Fright Night, you got instead of Susan Sarandon's husband in that picture.
In this movie, we've got the amazing, wonderful Omar Benson Miller playing Cornbread. He was trying to get back into the juke joint after he's gone outside to relieve himself. And some things may have happened.
So he's trying to get back inside the juke joint, but the people are suspicious, especially Annie played by the amazing Wimimu Saku. And Boyd is the cinematographer. I know how to light her.
We'll talk about that. She's suspicious, as is Michael B. Jordan playing one of the twins as Smoke.
Let's listen in.
What y'all doing? Just step aside and let me on in now.
Why you need him to do that?
You being strong enough to push past us? Well, I wouldn't be too polite now, would it, Miss Annie? I don't know why I'm talking to you anyway.
Don't talk to him.
You're talking to me right now.
Why you can't just walk your big ass up in here without an invite, huh?
Go ahead.
Admit to it.
Admit to what?
That you're dead.
So, you're listening to this? Now, we out here playing games, telling ghost stories in place of doing what we ought to do.
And what is it we supposed to be doing?
Now, we is one people, and we shouldn't go in barging into other folks' places uninvited, so... We've been in and out of here all day. Ain't never need to invite them.
Yeah, something ain't addin' up. Can I at least get my money?
And that is Sinners, which I'm going to say is an almost ecstatically demolitional film. It demolishes tropes about the South. It demolishes tropes about vampires.
It's so intriguing to me because on the one hand, like if you took the vampires out of it, it would be a piece of social history.
Yes, but this is the great thing about genre films, Gareth. Not to interrupt you, but like, you know you're in a good genre for, like a good horror film is as if there is no supernatural.
I mean, if you just want to stay the first hour, I'm ready for another hour with these people to see how things go with their business and their love life.
Totally. So you feel the reality of this place, even down to things like the Chinese family who operate a kind of a grocery store, they speak with Southern accent.
And all of that is to a point, which tells us that what we call ethnicity is malleable because they're Chinese, but they speak Southern. So all of those details are purposeful. It's amazing.
And what we're watching here is, like you've already said, this totally, totally original.
And by original, I mean, you know, I mean, there's nothing that comes out of nowhere. Original to me is when you're the first person to take this thing and that thing and put those two things together in a new way.
We've seen a number of the things in this film before. Of course, we've seen vampires. Of course, we've seen the trope of kind of people trying to kind of make a new life for themselves by opening a community venue, that kind of stuff.
But everything is invested with, I'm gonna call it blood, right? It is full blooded. Nothing feels superficial, down to the little grave of a deceased child, which, you know, that tree feels real.
You can feel the humidity around that tree. The fact that Annie, the mother of this deceased child, is kind of a medicine woman, and she also operates a little bit of a general store.
And she kind of would be, you know, someone on the edge of town who would have been persecuted and kind of occupied that kind of archetype of the witch who is held with suspicion. But she's a mother to the community as well.
And that's just like the first character that I'm thinking of. One of the very unusual things about this film is it has many more fully drawn characters than a typical feature film has.
It has the same kind of number of characters you'd expect in an HBO miniseries.
And this is one of the reasons why in my mind it is a blockbuster, mature commercial film in the way that The Godfather was. The Godfather, every line reveals character or motivation or plot. And in this film, there's no fat here.
Every single line, while it serves to move the plot forward and entertain you, it also reveals character. So it's almost a masterclass in that sense.
Well, and you feel like, as with The Godfather, probably if you were to go back and watch The Godfather and somehow surgically remove all the scenes that Robert Duvall appears in, I imagine that cumulatively in terms of the number of minutes, it's
not that long. But he casts a shadow over the film, just as Clemenza who's not in the film for very long as well. Everybody feels real. Everyone in this movie feels real.
You've already mentioned Omar Miller playing Cornbread, but there's easily 10 other characters that I remember from this movie.
But what I remember most of all, the character and the actor that I remember most of all, is Miles Caton, who's about 20 years old. It's his first film. He plays Sammy.
And if there is a protagonist in this film, it is Sammy. It's actually not Smoke and Stack, the twin brothers, because it's actually Sammy's preternatural gift or supernatural gift. What's the difference between preternatural and supernatural?
Are they the same thing?
They both have the word natural in them.
Do they?
Okay.
His magic of when he plays, that he summons the past and the future of, it isn't just black music, but black culture.
And there is this scene centrally in the film that you've already compared it to that opening scene of Star Wars and to Bullet Time and The Matrix.
I think it is deeper than that, because Bullet Time and The Matrix and the opening scene of Star Wars, they're not actually saying anything meaningful about the world.
They're spectacular. They're technical achievements. Maybe this is, yeah, but this is more like you put this in the realm of the chariot race and Ben Hur.
Oh, even more than that, it's actually talking about how nothing is ever just happening now.
That the future and the past are always happening at the same time. This film actually goes beyond the thing that Faulkner said that has become an absolute cliché when people say the past isn't past yet.
The future is in the present and the past is in the present. And I think the present is also in the past too. There is every, I mean, I'm 50 years old as you know, but every age that I have lived exists inside my body.
And I've also had enough experiences that seem a bit mysterious, that seem a bit beyond what would be conventionally understood as rational. Although I don't think that means they're not rational.
I just think that the conventional boundaries of rationality maybe need to expand a little bit. I've had enough experiences like that where it feels like me in the future already exists.
And this scene in which you see a character who looks like George Clinton and characters who look like salt and pepper, right?
Yes.
And then characters from the deep past in Africa, whatever African countries are being represented in this scene. I mean, I don't know about you. I wept in this scene, but it was weeping of cinematic ecstasy.
As a white person, of course, I have no purchase on this scene. I can only imagine what it's like to be a black person watching this scene, but I'm making up a story about, oh my God, what it must feel like to be represented past, present and future.
In a film that isn't been relegated to Off the Beaten Track, this is a $90 million cheaper blockbuster film made by, or at least distributed by Warner Brothers, made by the director of two of the most successful blockbuster films of all time, with,
as you say, an almost entirely black cast. And I went to see it on a Sunday afternoon on its second weekend at four o'clock in the afternoon.
And I have never been to a Sunday matinee in which the theatre was sold out, with people genuinely some whooping and some hollering. And when it was over, I was in the lobby. And dear listener, the film isn't over until the end of the end credits.
Please stay to the end of the end credits. I'm in the lobby and there were there was this bunch of young people. Oh, God, I sound I sound like a crotchety old man, but like 20 somethings.
You are.
And and I heard one of them say to another one.
Wow, I feel like I've been on a journey, right? A journey. Cinema is alive.
Sinners is a truly great film with one potential flaw that I'll get to later, although I'm not even sure. I'm not even sure it's a flaw. I had so much fun and I was enlightened.
I feel like I actually learned things in watching this film. I'm really glad it exists. It's the film of the moment.
Please go and see it. Other than that, I don't have very strong opinions about it. Jett, what do you think?
I like how you say please go see it because this is the first film in ages in which I've told people that are not like film buffs or people I talk film about with, why just out of the random allowed to say, oh, you got to go see Sinners.
The word of mouth in this film has been extraordinary. And it's making a ton of money and it's doing well day after day. It's not dropping down.
It's a big story in Hollywood right now because it's doing so well. And there's been a lot of pushback against the trades who were saying, Oh, it's, you know, it's, how can it get its investment back?
And people say, well, you weren't saying that about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when it's doing the same numbers, right?
And that's the reason why I said that's the thing, is because this shows people who make movies, who pay for movies, the people, the bums in the seats and the studios and the finance companies, it shows that you can make a film like this that expands
what cinema is, that is designed for the theatrical experience. It actually means something, many, many, many things. And it can be incredibly successful. And Ryan Coogler clearly loves film as in film, like celluloid.
I watched an interview with him the other day, and he's wearing, on his hat, it's a logo for Kodak. You know, I don't know if they're barely still around. He's excited about the movies.
And, you know, he's from a large part from the Bay Area where I'm from. And he fell in love with movies at the same place I did, which is the Grand Lake Theater. And I used to take the bus down to the Grand Lake.
There's two theaters, UC Theater and Grand Lake. And here's the thing, dear listeners, friends and lovers and Gareth, the Grand Lake is a movie palace.
Am I not a friend?
You are a friend. You know, you're many things.
You posited me in contrast to friends and lovers and Gareth.
I know, just like sinners, what I say contains multitudes.
Well, shouldn't we be addressing ourselves to friends, lovers and sinners?
I feel like we're getting off track. We call that a derail in the business.
In the business?
Thank you. I appreciate it.
I learned also from you.
Yes. Thank you. But it's a movie palace.
The Grand Lake is, you know, it's ornate. When you go there, it's like, oh, something's happening. When I was a kid, we would go on field trips there.
I remember watching an old print of The Creature of the Black Lagoon with the 3D glasses. It's a shrine, a church of movies.
And this is where Kugler had his first big movie experience when he was taken as a child, sitting in his dad's lap to see Boys in the Hood. And my point here is that he loves movies in the theater, and he loves big films.
And he's taken that love and he's externalized it in a fantastic way. And one thing I kind of want to emphasize here is how adept he is at film form, meaning how movies are made in the effect that you can have by using all the techniques of cinema.
So Gareth was talking about this amazing scene in which the protagonist or semi-protagonist conjures up all of time and space. And I have to tell you, Gareth, when that scene was going and we see at first that there's an ancestor, right?
Someone from Africa is there. He's there in the audience.
An elderly woman playing a little string dance.
Old, barely holding it together, shrunken maybe. And I thought, what a great idea. Like it's a vision of the past.
I thought, oh, that's really good. It kind of bumps up the film a notch. And the camera, which is constantly moving, then pulls back and like dollies right, or maybe dollies maybe it's freestanding, some version of a Steadicam, and goes to the left.
And there is, again, you said George Clinton is like Bootsy Collins, an electric guitar in my mind.
I mean, there's a wee touch of Prince in there, too.
And Prince, he's got these great goggles, glasses. And I thought, and, you know, for me, Come on, it's jaw dropping.
It's jaw dropping.
Well, maybe supposed to be from the 1970s. But for me, right away, I was like, is he from the 2170s? Is this a future God?
Yes, yes. And I don't know if I punched the air. I definitely know I grabbed, I just clenched my seat and my jaw dropped.
And then it just keeps going and we had hip-hop dancers. And then we've got like Chinese cultural dancers from, I don't know, the 1700s.
And it explodes the notion of time and space and shows what cinema can do so well, which is it can show you the past and it can show you the future. You can watch 2001 and you can also watch Ben Hur.
And it just elevated it and exploded the potential for commercial blockbuster cinema and it just bumped it up another notch. Cuz up until that point I'm going, hey, this is a good film. This is really good.
This is great. It's a good filmmaker. And then from that point on, you're in a different headspace, I would say.
And again, getting back to the idea that how good is it filmmaking? I know I'm going on here. One of the reasons that scene works so well is because the film pays such attention to the time and place that it's taking place in.
Meaning that the characters don't have the knowledge of the 60s because they're in the 30s. And the example I probably used on the show before is Raiders of the Lost Ark versus The Mummy.
Because Raiders of the Lost Ark, you feel like in the 30s, and I watched The Mummy and I went home, I thought, well, The Mummy is a fun picture, it's rollicking. Why isn't it as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Because in The Mummy, it just feels like you're, when was it, come out in the 90s, it just feels like 90s. I remember watching The Mummy 2 and someone makes a reference to, oh, we can't cause a chain reaction.
I'm like, wait a minute, they would never say chain reaction. There was no atomic bomb when this film takes place. It's like when you watch a film set in the past and someone goes, I got you, I got you, bro.
You wouldn't say that in 1924. So the reason that time and space thing works so well is because you are so grounded in the verisimilitude of whatever it is in 1932. It is set there.
The characters don't have knowledge of the future. This is their reality. The dust on the walls, the outfits, the wardrobe, everything.
So when you then have somebody, I'm going to say from the year 2170 appear, it's absolutely superb and sublime. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. I mean, the sawmill itself just feels lived in. It also feels killed in, which may be a spoiler.
And the way that the unfolding of the story that we're watching, which as I say, takes place over the course of 24 hours. Although again, dear listener, stay to the very end of the credits.
The telling of that story doesn't happen in a linear fashion.
There's a moment toward the end where, I mean, one thing that seems kind of, there's a little bit of kind of myth making about it, this idea that you could buy a building in the morning and by that night have it open for business.
But here's the thing.
It goes back to the Andy Hardy films, the 30s we're going to put on a show. He's seen those movies.
So there's a degree of that. And there's also something, in all honesty, I've been privileged and grateful to spend time around Black church traditions.
And Black church traditions are incredibly good at what apparently spontaneously organizing things. There's a whole thing, as you know, I'm involved in the church world in kind of white majority churches.
Clock time is kind of more sacrosanct than in Black churches. So you know, you say the service is going to start at 11 o'clock. Typically it starts at 11 o'clock in the white church.
In the Black church, there's a different relationship to time.
And I time after time have been to potluck meals and gatherings in Black church contexts in which, honestly, like five minutes before the thing starts, I'm looking around going, how is this ever going to happen? And then it happens.
There's something about a community sustaining more than the sum of its parts. And so we see, like, as it's unfolding, the first time I watched it, I'm like, oh, come on, they couldn't really do this in one night.
And you don't see, you just see they go down to the grocery store and say, we need 100 catfish for tonight. And the guy's like, yeah, how much is it going to cost?
There's actually two lovely sequences about how to negotiate a good price for something.
And there's a little bit of kind of character nuance in one of the Twin Brothers where he teaches, like a teenage girl, how to negotiate a good price because he doesn't want to exploit her.
He wants to show her how to prevent herself from being exploited. But toward the end of the film, after the climax, which is very bloody and very violent, but it's vampire violence. And so I found it strangely.
As you know, I don't watch a lot of horror films. I was a little bit apprehensive going in. The horror in this film is more like the horror of Get Out or Jaws, you know, rather than the horror of The Shining.
To me, it didn't leave me with a sense of disturbance in my spirit. Yeah, there's more like, oh, you know, something's gonna jump out and stuff like that. But if you're like me, I think you'll probably be okay watching this film.
Anyway, there's this little moment after the climax where we see with no dialogue, little elliptical glimpses of what happened between them asking the Chinese grocers for the fish.
And then later that day, when they actually cooked it and prepared it and swept the floors.
Yeah, we see a whole bunch of people helping out.
Yeah. And so it's kind of overlapping on itself.
23:45
Cultural Adaptation
Now, far more important than any of this, we really do need to talk about it, is what this film says about race, power dynamics, cultural appropriation. And you could say that at one level, this film is a big joke about copyright infringement.
It's well-known. Big Mama Thornton recorded the better version of Hound Dog before Elvis built a stratospheric career through taking that song.
And as far as I know, Big Mama Thornton's heirs are still waiting for proportionate credit for what was built on top of her moderate success. This film uses the metaphor of vampires as an analogy for cultural appropriation.
And I don't think the word cultural appropriation is a strong enough term.
And it does it with real nuance because the chief vampire is what would be pejoratively referred to as poor white trash, Irish Appalachian, someone who's kind of, he's under the thumb economically, but he responds to his own oppression by oppressing
other people. There's one piece of very subtle dialogue. Whenever Sammy is praying the Lord's prayer in order to kind of protect himself from the vampire, and then all the vampires start reciting the Lord's prayer too.
And the chief vampire, Remick Jack O'Connell, says, you know, I know those words as well. The first time I heard them was with the man who was stealing my family's land, but I still find the words comforting.
And he seems to be of the mind that in order for his own culture to survive, he has to consume the culture of marginalized people. That he wants and that when he sees that Sammy has the power to call forth his culture, he wants that power too.
He is unable to recognize that it is entirely possible to do your Riverdance thing. And I'm, you know, I'm not entirely serious about Riverdance. I actually paid to see the original production of Riverdance and it's fantastic.
You can do your culturally specific thing and glory in the wonder of that and share it with other people by inviting them to witness it. And maybe from time to time, you can collaborate a wee bit to build something else.
But what you shouldn't do is occupy somebody else's culture, drain it of all life and then take credit for it yourself. And what intrigues me about this, let me, let me just finish this point. Let me just finish this point.
What intrigues me about this is the film, it made me, Sinners made me think a lot about Mississippi Burning, which is a film I watched as a teenager in Belfast and was really struck by.
And I thought it was teaching me about racism and the Deep South and the Black Civil Rights Movement. And I didn't know until I actually met civil rights movement, historians and people in the US.
I didn't realize how negatively perceived that film is, because it's a film that really posits bad white people against good white people. And the only portrayal of Black experience is the portrayal of suffering.
Mississippi Burning is like, it's a terrible way to teach people about the realities of Black experience and the meaning of the Black Civil Rights Movement. And this film doesn't actually have any good white people in it.
This film has two sets of bad white people. It's got the clan members and the chief vampire.
Is he bad?
Well, all right, that's interesting.
But here's the thing about the cultural appropriation, because if I had missed one line in the film, then I would agree with you 100%. Because he's talking and he's trying to convince them they're in the water in the baptism scene.
He's trying to convince them, say, he come with us because we have this community of people, it's a community of all together.
He says, you become one of us and I'll have all of your musical knowledge and that right there, I'm like, oh my God, he's appropriating. But then there's a beat and he goes, and you'll have all of mine or all of ours too. I think it's more-
You think he can really trust him though?
Just because he's a blood sucking killer?
You're very open-hearted about your vampire-
Are you saying that Remick is just being charming?
I'm saying that Remick-
I mean, I'd actually like that. I'd like to see a spinoff about how Remick became Remick and what's really going on there, but this film should not have a sequel. This film should definitely not have a sequel.
Well, the thing is, it does have a sequel and it's in the movie, and that was also brilliant.
Dear listeners, I hope you've seen this.
I stayed through the very end of the credits. It is a complete work in and of itself. It does not need a sequel in order to justify itself.
I love what he did by having that very, very long, not like a one minute, two minute, maybe it's like five or six minutes long, mid-credit sequence.
So the film ends, and in my mind, I'm like, oh, he nailed it and people started leaving. And then there's another scene and it's a very important scene. I was really worried like, oh no, you've already nailed it, don't ruin it.
And what that is is a sort of mini-sequel built into the film.
It's a perfect coda.
The coda, as you really call it, is amazing, because it's another example of how films and story-telling can travel through time and make you feel like you've traveled through time.
Because the character of Stack, who appears at the end, is dressed in the most astonishing, the wardrobe here. Is it Ruth Carter? Ruthie Carter?
She's already won a few Oscars. The sweater he wears, it would have been a good scene anyways, but the sweater he wears is so much at the height of African-American fashion in the 90s, my mind was blown looking at that sweater.
It makes perfect sense because he was just as stylish back in the 30s. It really explodes the nature of time and space because we can understand that you are one thing in one place and you can be the same thing in another place on a timeline.
It's really stunning. It's worth that coat is worth it just for the sweater alone.
May I say one more thing? I don't have any comments to make about the sweater other than. I agree with you.
So religion, the pastor of the church.
Who's a famous poetry slam guy?
Saul Williams, very famous performance poet, rapper, musician, actor, plays the pastor of the church. He's Sammy's dad. He doesn't want Sammy to be playing music in the joints because that's kind of in the murky world of the sinners.
The film is not anti-religious. It's not anti-spirituality.
And even that scene about the Lord's prayer is not anti-religious either, first of all, but the fact that it evokes the fact that for many people, the act of prayer can be reassuring, whatever else it may or may not.
Yeah, it's an amazing line when you say that he still utilizes it.
I feel comforted by it.
It's comforting Sami too, but it's clear that one of the things the film is saying is that Sami is pursuing a spiritual calling that's just as vocationally relevant and credible and just as much ministry as the one that his father has pursued in the
church. And I find that intensely moving. No, should we talk about... Go ahead.
No, he's his father's son in that respect.
That's right, and he does ministry for the rest of his life.
And he has, he literally, he has a church.
Yeah. And the, you know, casting somebody that is so fluid and famous as a poet is another master stroke in a film. Oh yeah.
Every detail is filled with master strokes. You have a problem with the game.
So what do you think my problem is? What do you think my problem is?
Oh, that there's try, there is a scene of, of the catharsis is, is manufactured through violence when smoke kills the clan and an amazing rousing sequence at the end. I'm assuming that's it. So it's not a non-violent resolution.
There is a moment and, and, you know, this is definitely a, a, a spoiler.
So smoke is, he's, you know, he's, he has ambushed clan members, killed all but one of them. Their leader is kind of dying in front of him. And he's sitting on the ground and Annie, the love of his life, appears to him from beyond.
She is, she has died a few hours previously. And she is nursing their infant child. They're both dressed in white.
And she goes to hand the baby to smoke, who's, who's lit up a cigarette. And she says, put that cigarette out. I don't want you getting smoke on the baby.
So he puts the cigarette out. But then before he takes the baby, he, he kills the clan leader and then he takes the baby. Now, that scene reminded the scene.
The film that reminded me most of is, is Bonnie and Clyde. No, the Shape of Water, because the Shape of Water also ends with a guy sitting and having the opportunity to not kill someone.
In fact, the kind of, if there's a hero, well, there's a lot of hero characters in Shape of Water. One of the hero characters has the opportunity to resurrect this guy after he kills him and chooses not to do it.
And maybe we'll, did we do an episode on the Shape of Water?
This is our 296th episode.
We may have done an episode.
Anything is possible.
Anyway, what bothered me about that was that the Shape of Water is a film about including marginalized people and prioritizing humanity over everything else. And it takes the easy way out of just slaughtering the bad guy at the end.
There are lots of other options. So I'm watching Sinners and I am initially thinking, oh no, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. At one level, it is awful.
He's in the act of, he's being handed his infant child. Could not be more symbolic of life. Could not be more symbolic of get up and walk away from this killing, from this cathartic killing.
And he chooses not to take the baby. He kills the guy first, then he takes the baby and himself goes into the afterlife. But as I pondered it afterwards, there's two things that I'm thinking about.
One is it's absolutely in alignment with that character. This is what smoke would have done, right? The second thing, actually just three things.
The second thing is I'm not sure what else he could have done in that moment. It's not like you can go and tell the cops that there's been a raid on his sawmill from the clan. And he is himself dying.
And the third thing is I want to be careful that I don't do the same thing to the character of smoke as the vampires are doing to the Smoke and Stack brothers in this film, which is to put my story on top of theirs.
So what I'll say is I don't think that I'm not going to hold that judgment as like a constant thing. I'm holding it loosely. And I'll say it just troubles me.
It always troubles me when lethal violence is used cathartically to resolve a problem in drama. And this one leaves me with a question mark rather than a certainty.
And I'm interested to know what you thought about that scene and how that kind of wraps things up.
Yeah, a few different things. Thank you for that.
You know, In Shape of Water really felt unnecessary because there felt like there were other options, because the person that dies in the end, thematically in the film, did not represent a spiritual systemic evil that is existed throughout time that
must be resisted at all costs, whereas the clan in Sinners do. It's not just one guy. It is a group of people we see, and they represent an entire system of oppression.
And the other thing is, again, this is a blockbuster movie made by somebody that loves big commercial films, because the film is constantly shifting through genres.
And when this scene happens, it shifts into Rambo, like the filmmaking style changes to Rambo, or even something as absurd as Commando with slow motion grenades. And the audience goes wild. And then when he shoots the big bad guy, what's his name?
It's Hogwart's Fogfather, whatever it is. He shoots and I wondered how they were going to show it. And what he does is, is we get a shot of he's on the ground and he takes out a Tommy gun.
Tommy gun is a great choice. It's a nod to the fact they're in Chicago. And again, just every line is great.
They mention, it's like, oh, you worked at Al Capone, which right away, you know these guys, two guys are dangerous. The one who mentions, wow, they worked with Al Capone. And then we see a Tommy gun at the end.
It shows him just unloading so many bullets. And then, in my mind, I'm watching, are they going to cut and show this? And then you see the guy just getting blown apart.
And right away, this is clearly a film that shows that Ryan Coogler and the editors, and the cinematographer, frame the shot, really understood the impact and loved the impact of Bonnie and Clyde. And then James Cahn getting-
On the tollbooth.
And the tollbooth. Absolutely, it is. It's not a reference to the godfather, Bonnie and Clyde, but it is informed by that.
And as a commercial filmmaker, the audience goes crazy. And it doesn't seem as cathartic. It's not this is going to end systemic evil, but it works in the context of the film because you are fighting against systemic evil.
The vampires were one kind of evil, if you believe that they are. But again, this film is so wonderful that I'm almost rooting for the vampires because they say, hey, come on, there's no, we shouldn't have to be.
We believe in equality.
Yeah, they do. They literally say this. They're like the best vampires.
This is why this is such a richer film other than movies like From Dusk to Dawn, which are just entertainments, but don't have the thematic richness to it. So it's not necessarily cathartic for smoke, but this is something that just has to get done.
And then you intercut that with just an astonishing shots of Annie nursing her baby, and she's in white. It's so beautifully shot, dear listeners, lovers and friends, Gareth. And she's wearing baby's breath.
Don't forget the sinners.
Sinners and the sinners, we're all broken in some way.
Just like smoke has PTSD and can't light a cigarette, and she has baby breath on her hair, and it revokes, I'm trying, I forgot the name, friends, I'm sorry, there's a contemporary photographer that's really good at this, but it's just a beautiful
shot and it cuts the brutality of a godfather death with shots of exquisite beauty. I think that's really something.
Can I say one thing, since we're talking about the godfather, a couple of things, and you brought this up with, we learned his little lesson about money, and then we see that in practice.
There's another scene like that I'll talk about in a second, and this is reminiscent of the godfather, is a famous scene in which you learn how to make good pasta sauce.
We talk about it, I put the onions and the sugar, and he goes, and that's my trick. We have two of those in this film. One, it teaches you how to use money, and this is a film that is also about mentoring.
The film is really about teaching a lot. Ryan Cooke, you can see him as a film professor.
He went to USC, and then there's an astonishing bit, which has a payoff later, in which the film teaches you how to pleasure a woman orally, and then literally tells you step-by-step what to do, and then we get a payoff then, you know?
We get a payoff later, which includes one of my favorite lines. It's like, you know, Peacher Boy, I walked here. If you've seen the film, you'll get it.
So, you know, that's another amazing aspect about this film that works on so many levels. It's also teaching you things. You learn things.
You learn history lessons. There's an amazing piece, Monologue by Delroy Lindo, in which he describes... Delroy Lindo.
Delroy Lindo.
Delroy Lindo. I'm saying his name three times, because he gives like three times the performance.
He's a real Delroy Lindo. If you like your Delroy Lindo, you get the full Delroy Lindo.
This is the most Delroy Lindo of any Delroy Lindo performance. I want a five-season drama on AMC, about the life of the Delroy Lindo character up until this movie and then his afterlife forever.
Yeah. Well, that's a mark of a great film that you care about these characters. It reminds me of that.
What's the check off story with the dog? Lady and the dog, I've forgotten it. But it ends with these two characters who have left their spouses.
The story wonders, I wonder what's going to happen to them. I thought about those two characters every month since I was a kid. So that's the sign of great art.
But Delroy Lindo gives this monologue talking about lynching that is like educating people about what it's like to live. I mean, and yet it also perfectly works within the context of the film. And so you can see this film as a history lesson.
You watch closely, you realize the Chinese couple owns two stores right across from each other. They're segregated, one's for the white folk, one's for the black folk. They don't pan the camera over to say segregated.
They just watch and learn from looking at commercial cinema. So what an achievement. Any last words?
41:21
Final Thoughts
Can I say I do love this line, maybe we have to bleep this out. Is it Haley Stanfield says, Oh, you can rob trains and banks, but you can't steal this for a night. The film is also incredibly like the sex is amazing in the film.
The sexiness of the film is incredible.
Friends, lovers, sinners, there's almost nobody that shouldn't enjoy this film. I'd say we both think it's pretty good.
It points forward to a world in which people go to the movies and love movies and understand them. You can learn from movies and be entertained at the same time.
What's that line about, it was in Saturday Night Live, which Tom Hanks played a white contestant on Black Jeopardy. Everyone is surprised that he likes the films of Tyler Perry. He goes, I love Tyler Perry.
If I can cry and learn something at the same time I'm there. I'm paraphrasing, I'm getting it wrong.
I hope that from time to time, Jett, that The Film Talk is a place where you can both cry and learn.
We have to start playing music now? I got to learn how to play. I don't think I'm as good as Buddy Guy.
I don't think I'll ever, I mean, maybe I'm being down on myself, but I don't think I'll ever quite get to the Buddy Guy, amazing cameo at the end.
Well, it's really good to be able to chat with you about this film. Dear listener, I hope you'll go to see Sinners. If you want to hear more of our episodes or support the show, you can go to patreon.com/thefilmtalk.
Thanks for listening folks, friends, lovers, and sinners.
I've been Jett Loe.
I've been Gareth Higgins. We'll keep talking next time.