America is not okay.
Maybe America has never been okay. Maybe certain members of our society are just now starting to realize this fact. In any case, the Band-Aid of civility has been ripped from our flesh, the fissures and wounds of our great American experiment now exposed for what they are: bruised ideals, a great many of which are built on fallacies.
The murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is not the only reason that protestors around the country are currently squaring off with police forces and the National Guard. Systemic police brutality has been ongoing in this country for years and this is what Colin Kaepernick tried to peacefully protest in the U.S. during football games and the NFL kicked him out cause that wasn’t the way you’re supposed to protest either (they owe him such an apology, frankly).
READ MORE: The 20 Best Films About Resistance In Times Of Encroaching Fascism
The recent uprisings are protesting the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and so many, senseless, tragic deaths that came before them. In this particular case, Mr. Floyd’s murder was merely the tipping point that ignited the rage that has been brewing for decades and if you can’t see this you need to unfog your glasses among other desperate changes needed in your life. This same logic applies to the looting and rioting: these acts are merely symptoms of a more odious social disease. In lieu of real leadership, in lieu of just policing, Americans now find themselves staring each other down on opposing sides of a battlefield riddled with non-white casualties.
And yet, let us not forget, we are seeing displays of unity during this otherwise dire time, where it feels as though the world is both literally and figuratively on fire. Community is essential to human evolution, and the demonstrators in cities across our country are showing us exactly that.
We here at The Playlist believe that cinema is one of the great modern healing tools. To us, cinema is what Roger Ebert once called “a machine that generates empathy.” Films, in other words, are vessels that allow us to step into the perspectives of characters who do not necessarily share our same backgrounds or ideals. Some of us here, may not fit into “other,” but certain films allow us the opportunity to try and understand “otherness” as a concept. In other words, they offer us a chance to educate ourselves which is, of course, a privilege those who face racism day in and day out don’t have.
In 2020, civil disobedience makes sense. The system is broken. We, as Americans, are way past crying for “policy and change.” The films on this list are films that reflect that understandable anger, which is in and of itself patriotic. The anger of our brothers and sisters in the streets is anger that yearns for a kinder country, a more fair country, a country where certain citizens don’t have to fear for their lives simply because they exist. The films collected here are attuned to the power of disrupting corrupt social orders. Simply put, they are about what it means to demand a higher standard of living as a citizen of this broken world, which is, for better or worse, the only world we have.
Things are terrible right now. This much is true. Alas, we must continue fighting for the right things: equality, anti-racism, anti-fascism, and progress for those that our society has left behind. I believe these are the films that can help, if ever so slightly, guide us along that path.
“The Battle of Algiers” (1966)
Look, this film is an absolute necessity on a list such as this. “The Battle of Algiers,” directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, is arguably the most important movie ever made about guerilla warfare. Truthfully, it’s hard to imagine the filmography of Paul Greengrass, Ladj Ly’s recent protest drama “Les Miserables,” or really, half the films we’ve included in this piece without this picture’s immeasurable influence. “Algiers” dares to depict a movement that most films of the period were too timid to confront: the valiant efforts of Algerian rebels taking a stand against the French government in the late-1950s. The film is filled with disconcerting yet familiar imagery, including small businesses being bombed out, and paramilitary troopers terrorizing citizens in the street. The movie’s direct, newsreel-style visual approach never relents, and the vaguely militaristic score by the great Ennio Morricone somehow enhances the film’s neorealism without inflating the action with false artifice (the casting of non-professional actors also helps in that regard). Here is a cinematic milestone that implores us to fight the good fight long and hard, even and especially during times when it seems as though tomorrow is promised to no one.
“La Chinoise” (1967)
One could argue that nearly all of Jean-Luc Godard’s films are concerned with politics in one way or another, but with the possible exception of “Made In U.S.A.,” it’s hard to think of a more explicitly political work from this director than “La Chinoise,” a revolutionary satire about a militia of Mao-obsessed insurgents living in mid-century Paris. Godard was never afraid to ask big questions, and he doubles down on that button-pushing quality here, asking his audience if they think it’s alright for radicals to employ brute force in the name of achieving political goals, or whether or not a poisoned political infrastructure is capable of being fixed from the inside. With this film, Godard ditches the playful pop postmodernism of “Pierrot Le Fou” and “Band of Outsiders” in favor of something altogether more provocative: even Jean-Pierre Leaud, the erstwhile Antoine Doinel, seems genuinely pissed off here. While Godard has a history of making troubling, tone-deaf comments (mainly regarding Jews, which we won’t get into here), in “La Chinoise,” he poses a question that’s become increasingly essential in these last few weeks: how meaningful is ideology, really, if it’s not backed up by swift, decisive action?
“Killer of Sheep” (1978)
Few directors were as gifted at capturing the quotidian magic of everyday life as Charles Burnett. In masterworks such as “My Brother’s Wedding” and “To Sleep With Anger,” Burnett illuminated forgotten pockets of urban America, lending dignity, humanity, and grace to Black characters who were often painted as one-dimensional side players in Hollywood pictures of the period. “Killer of Sheep,” Burnett’s greatest triumph, is essentially a tapestry of moments. More to the point, it is a tapestry of humanity, highlighting the hardscrabble nobility that had previously been denied to Black characters in movies made by and for white folks. It must be mentioned that the specter of the 1965 Watts riots hangs over the action of “Killer of Sheep” like a phantom presence. Watching the film, one senses that Watts was in the process of rebuilding itself as Burnett and his crew began shooting there. This is something we are seeing variations on today, whether it’s good Samaritans sweeping streets or picking up broken glass in the aftermath of a looting, or small business owners acknowledging that the destruction of their property, however tragic it might be, ultimately pales in comparison to the loss of innocent human life.
“The Killing Floor” (1984)
As a director, Bill Duke was never afraid to sew some hard-hitting social commentary into the fabric of otherwise familiar genre entertainments: think of how his seminal L.A. neo-noir “Deep Cover” was a sneaky dissection of institutional racism disguised as a hip-hop-indebted drug thriller, or how the director’s “Hoodlum” examined smoldering racial tensions in a treacherous Depression-era crime racket. “The Killing Floor” is not one of Duke’s more popular directorial outings. It’s a sincere, well-acted historical drama that was distributed under PBS’s “American Playhouse” banner, and is ultimately far less gritty than Duke’s other movies. That said, “The Killing Floor” is very much of a piece, thematically speaking, with Duke’s other work. That is to say, it is concerned with the plight of being Black in America, and what that means as far as trying to make an honest living. The film’s protagonists are two blue-collar friends, Custer and Thomas, who migrate to Chicago and start working in the stockyards, where they experience both subtle and overt racism, in addition to confronting the inequities of being a minority in a status-obsessed capitalist society. The film takes place in the years building up to the Red Summer race riot that engulfed much of Chicago’s South Side in 1919 and took upwards of thirty lives; to say Duke’s directorial debut holds up today would be an understatement.
“Brazil” (1985)
The sad truth is that Terry Gilliam has lost a bit of his magic in recent years: his most recent film, “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” was too lugubrious to justify its legendary production history, and while his later films (“Tideland,” “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”) have their defenders, they’re ultimately a far cry from his visionary early work. Of course, Gilliam has always had a soft spot for dystopian fiction. Hell, Gilliam has gone dystopic in everything from the loopy “12 Monkeys” to the Christoph Waltz-starring “The Zero Theorem.” “Brazil” is the most memorable and feverish dystopia that Gilliam has ever fashioned, and as a work of film art, it’s among the director’s finest achievements. The upside-down autocratic nightmare state that Gilliam creates in this 1985 milestone looks practically quaint compared to the current daily reality of most Americans, most of whom are sheltering in place as the sounds of police sirens create an incessant, wailing din just outside their window. Other merits of “Brazil” include marvelous performances from Jonathan Pryce and Robert De Niro (the latter appearing briefly as a bizarre heating engineer), mind-boggling surrealist production design from Roger Pratt, and a pronounced political bite that’s been largely absent from this director’s later work.
“Matewan” (1985)
It goes without saying that John Sayles is one of the most significant independent filmmakers of all time. He’s also a writer-director who has almost always, without fail, been on the right side of history. Sayles’ filmography is filled with impassioned examples of social justice cinema; long before the term “social justice” had entered the popular lexicon (in that regard, “Men with Guns” and “City of Hope” are two terrific Sayles picture that could have easily ended up on this list). “Matewan” is considered by many to be the indie maverick’s defining achievement. It’s also his most politically loaded movie, which is saying something. “Matewan” is the sobering story of a coal miner’s strike in 1920’s Virginia, and it is notable for being the screen debut of one of our finest actors, Chris Cooper, who would go on to appear in many other Sayles films. That said, “Matewan” is really about the notion that working-class individuals cannot rely on the proverbial powers that be for protection. Even in 2020, with so much fear clogging our social feeds, union solidarity remains a very real issue, and “Matewan” offers us a somber, thoughtful look at the eternal relevance of this struggle.
“Do The Right Thing” (1989)
A lot of people say that “Do The Right Thing” feels like it was made yesterday. As dispiriting as that assertion is to consider, the truth is that it feels like it was made today. Like, this morning. Spike Lee’s unforgettable portrait of a sweltering summer’s day in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York that erupts into racial tension and sudden violence inspired fear in white audiences in 1989: there was a completely unfounded worry that African-American audiences would see the rioting in the film and be inspired to re-enact it in real life. What these viewers failed to comprehend was that the character in “Do The Right Thing” that throws a trash can through a pizzeria windshield and effectively kick-starts a powder keg of unrest – shrewd, mild-mannered delivery boy Mookie, played by Lee himself – is depicted as an otherwise “civil” character who is able to maneuver safely between two worlds. Of course, we are all now beginning to peel back the façade of civility, and seeing how the concept can be weaponized to justify deplorable behavior. Films like “Do The Right Thing” help us to accomplish exactly that. In an age where public property is still considered of more worth than Black lives, “Do The Right Thing” might stand as the most depressingly relevant American movie of all time.