Note: the author of this review has viewed Judas And The Black Messiah on a digital screener of the house. Before you decide to see it – or any other movie – in a movie theater, you need to consider the health risks involved. Here is an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
It is difficult to overestimate the cultural upheaval of the late 60’s. Americans got a small taste of the political chaos of the 2020 era, but for many, the experience has been mitigated by the dissociative effect of watching life on a smartphone screen. And the events unfold besides. The unrest in the 60s was sustained, organized and direct, and groups such as the Black Panthers, with their commitment to solidarity and mutual aid, posed a tangible threat to white rule in this country – to white supremacy, in the form of the FBI, ended the revolution before it could really begin.
As for history, Judas And The Black Messiah is relatively simple. It is surrounded by the familiar device of a character giving an interview, and anchored by the most important human experiences: a love story. Director Shaka King follows the material in a novelistic way, concentrating less on the relationship between the two title characters and more on what was going on in Chicago around the time when FBI informant William O’Neill (LaKeith Stanfield) visited Illinois. Black Panther Party invaded. 1968. Those hoping for a climate confrontation between the thrilling protagonists of the film will not find it here because it did not go down that way in real life. But there is still a lot of dramatic friction to be found.
As Illinois party chairman Fred Hampton, Daniel Kaluuya is the sun why everything else in Judas And The Black Messiah turn. Hampton recruits new members, unites warring factions and intimidates the bejesus with his charisma and radical platform for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen). The activist really comes alive in front of a crowd as Kaluuya channels the scorching intensity he brought to Steve McQueen. Widows to more just, but equally electrifying purposes. But even from the stage, stalwart Hampton rarely lets his guard down, and that’s what makes his bond with Deborah (Dominique Fishback) and the lover and armory so special. She knows how to reach out to him as he comes through an audience, and Fishback’s knowing gentleness balances Kaluuya’s steadfast power to the touching effect.
Compared to Hampton, O’Neill is a rat walking through a flaming maze, desperate, scared and eternally reactive. Stanfield’s actions are equally evasive. On the one hand, Bill is a skilled liar who can turn around in the inner circle of Hampton without breaking character. On the other hand, he is squeamish, excited and cannot hide his emotions when placed under intense pressure. But while Stanfield and Kaluuya offer two captivating – and contrasting – performances, Judas And The Black Messiah is an ensemble piece with no weak links but only secret weapons.
The conflicting corporeality of the films is only one way King shows, rather than telling. At one point, a clip from O’Neill’s dark, cramped room after the lavish suburban excavations of his FBI agent, Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), demonstrates their imbalance without dialogue. (Plemons is a decisive coup in a film full of it, a perfect rendition of the true face of white supremacy.) Just as Mitchell did with O’Neill, the characters’ information is withheld and fragmented throughout. And as the tension builds, the impression of a trap being built and set somewhere just out of sight is heightened. It is an elegant and subtle dramatization of institutional racism and how it works.
King also shows a talent for juxtaposition in his transitions between scenes, to use it to underline points and to add small moments of ironic humor to this otherwise serious story. (Early on, we saw Hampton archive material talking about free breakfast for kids, before Hoover dramatically declared: ‘TBlack Panthers are the biggest threat to our national security. Free breakfast! The horror!) His confident direction keeps the camera going throughout, and the free-jazz score of composers Craig Harris and Mark Isham both fits the era, adding more nervous energy to the already explosive atmosphere in Chicago. The Windy City shown in this film is not one of skyscrapers and a vast expanse, but of modest brick houses, sloppy alleys, and industrial yards inhaling toxic fumes into the air that children living blocks away from.
Both Hampton’s son Fred Hampton Jr. and his mother, Deborah Johnson (who later changed her name to Akua Njeri), worked as consultants on Judas And The Black Messiah, and the film is certainly an admirable portrait of the Black Panthers. But King and co-screenwriters Will Berson and Keith and Kenneth Lucas (also known as the comedy duo The Lucas Brothers) add layers to this already complicated story, giving O’Neill only the slightest sympathy (he is also caught in a trap.) and made Mitchell clash over his role in the eventual murder of Hampton. Here, both the militant and the humanitarian side of the Panthers are exhibited, and portrayed as the Chicago Police Department in a bad light, history also carries it out. If anything, the fact that this film is exciting and relevant 50 years later speaks to how right Fred is. Hampton was. You can kill a person, but you can not kill an idea.