[Film Review] The Forty-Year-Old Version (2020) and One Night in Miami… (2020)

Amid the all-the-rage Afrocentric cinema, here are two resounding directorial feature debut from two African-American female hyphenates. THE 40-YEAR-OLD VERSION is playwright-actress-rapper-comedienne Radha Blank’s semi-autobiographical account of her career struggle, whereas ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI… is Oscar-winning actress Regina King’s foray behind the camera, a fictionalized bull session based on a real-life happenstance featuring 4 renowned all-male black personages in 1964.

VERSION is a feisty, punchy, seriocomic satire about how to “make it” in the NY theatre scene (the bottomline is you should be the real deal, not a phony). Blank directs, writes, produces and stars it, playing a version of herself, a playwright edging 40 and still pays her dues, who oscillates between chasing the elusive success of debuting her play in Broadway and reigniting her passion for rapping and rhyming, and Blank tells us those two dreams are not necessarily exclusive. Playwriting is Radha’s vocation which is more likely to reward her with financial security and prestige than her rhyming side hustle under the alter ego “RadhaMUSprime”, however, it is a fertile ground for romantic tingles and you can both your cake and eat it too.

Radha’s pursuit of Broadway entails the usual snags a writer has to face (it is important to note that is not racialized, any writer may contend with meddling producers and conceited directors, her coloration doesn’t play a key part in that), and she doesn’t go to the mat for her writer’s integrity, lets her work being bastardized (to attract more lighter-skinned audience obviously) in exchange for that Holy Grail, she only denounces it after she has earned her place on the stage during the curtain call.

It seems the climactic, rhetorical “épater les bourgeois” speech/rap combo is too tempting for Radha the filmmaker to eschew, which she delivers cogently, but it is an all-too-obvious soapbox to grab. The truth is, Blank’s no-show would have spoken much more volumes. One could only wish she could ditch the fancy dress, skip the premiere and make a beeline to her new boyfriend D (Benjamin, looks perpetually stoned), to celebrate her personal triumph in another “Queen of the Ring” smackdown, perhaps?

VERSION is consciously flouts the poverty porn treatment and other well-worn stereotypes (a dis of “the magic negro” is the funniest gag, with Radha’s cracking knee comes close as the runner-up), therefore, by shooting in black & white 35mm film, Radha adds a beguilingly poetic sheen to the film's look and diverts our attention to the harsh reality (for instance, in her own words, Radha says she is living in a “box”, but we don’t get to see the what the box looks like). Only the subplot involving Radha’s unruly, diverse students (yes, her main job is a high school drama teacher) ends up half-baked.

By all accounts, Radha comes out with distinction, her directorial technique is promising and her performance is full of nuances, comical gestures and surely the woman can rap just for the hell of it! Also, as Archie, Peter Kim’s “gay best friend” iteration is upgraded with great agency and a soupçon of intersectionality, his chemistry with Radha is simply divine.

King’s ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI… brings us back to a pivotal day, on February 25, 1964, Malcolm X (Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Hodge), Sam Cooke (Odom) and Cassius Clay (Goree), before he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, are gathering together to celebrate Clay’s fresh victory as the new heavyweight champion. Writer Kemp Powers puts his puissant words into the quartet’s mouths, gives a comprehensive look of the hot-button racial and religious issues that bind and divide the four made men of dark pigmentation.

King manages to construct an adequate period milieu but she betrays her greenness in Clay’s match sequences, punches are conspicuously pulled, not a single sweat is shed, the pace is haphazard, their fakery is astonishing and a waste of Goree’s well-honed physique. Which makes one realize we cannot take the expertise shown in Ryan Coogler’s CREED (2015) for granted.

Albeit the four’s amity, discords are crammed into the long night, but Powers cherry-picks the internecine face-off between Malcolm X and Sam Cookie as the center piece. It is a writer’s comprise, because their divergence is least tub-thumping (it is merely a matter of different means to the same end), whereas the more intricate, delicate frictions (e.g. under Malcolm’s tutelage, Clay’s sudden conversion to Islam is a bombshell to Brown and Cooke; or Malcolm’s own departure from Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam appears like a betrayal to Clay, and he doesn’t even care to explain the reason why.) are sideshows.

If Goree’s impersonation of Clay is a shade facetious, unconvincing, playing a 22-year-old wunderkind basking in his crowning glory doesn’t imply he is a cardboard dynamo, Hodge’s Brown comes off as more balanced, meditative and realistic, an apt mediator when dissension emerges. Gauging that he is the only one who is still with us today, Jim Brown receives a kid-glove treatment.

Then, Odom, with the bonus points earned by his velvety musicality, nabs two Oscar nominations (one for acting, one for SPEAK NOW, the rousing, tuneful song that almost leaves Yours Truly misty-eyed during the end credits), and his Cooke is a relaxed, cool guy, no thorny side, only gets defensive when he is subjected as the fair game by a militant Malcolm, his canniness (catering to white folks while fostering black talents sounds just like the right move) and chasteness (served as the inspiration of writing his signature song A CHANGE IS GONNA COME, an outcry for racial equality) are shown in equal measure. An anecdote of being wrong-footed by Jackie Wilson (Jeremy Pope makes a flash of imitation) is a mawkish move.

Ben-Adir pours out all his heart and commitment to give us a jaded activist with dimensions, tormented by presentiment and paranoia, Malcolm looks like he knows his time is clicking (which is contrasted by Cooke’s insouciance, they would both make their maker within one year, Malcolm is assassinated, and Cooke’s case is a rather peculiar, unexpected one hurt for a cinematic adaptation), even his didactic speech is infected with a pang of desperation, no heroic self-importance can be felt from the martyrdom in the offing and how can one not affected by so heartfelt a cri de cœur, still, as posterity, we fail him time and again. Ben-Adir is my MVP among the cast.

Like the acronym of Blank’s film: “F.Y.O.V. - Find Your Own Vision”, is opportune to the Afrocentric cinema, now the window of opportunity finally opens, audience needs to be bowled over by fresh visions, a shortfall in both Blank and King’s debut features.

referential entries: Barry Jenkins’ IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (2018, 7.3/10); Shaka King’s JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (2021, 7.7/10); Curtis Hanson’s 8 MILE (2002, 7.3/10).

Title: The Forty-Year-Old Version

Year: 2020

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Director/Screenwriter: Radha Blank

Cinematography: Eric Branco

Music: Guy C. Routte

Editing: Robert Grigsby Wilson

Cast:

Radha Blank

Peter Kim

Oswin Benjamin

Imani Lewis

Haskiri Velazquez

Reed Birney

Andre Ward

Antonio Ortiz

T.J. Atoms

Ashlee Brian

Stacey Sargeant

William Oliver Watkins

Meghan O’Neill

Welker White

Jacob Ming-Trent

Rating: 7.3/10

Title: One Night in Miami...

Year: 2020

Country: USA

Language: English, Arabic

Genre: Drama

Director: Regina King

Screenwriter: Kemp Powers

based on his own stage play

Music: Terence Blanchard

Cinematography: Tami Reiker

Editing: Tariq Anwar

Cast:

Kingsley Ben-Adir

Eli Goree

Leslie Odom Jr.

Aldis Hodge

Lance Reddick

Christian Magby

Joaquina Kalukango

Michael Imperioli

Beau Bridges

Nicolette Robinson

Jeremy Pope

Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

Rating: 7.2/10