One of the best films of the year, Margaret BrownB次元官网网址檚 is, strictly speaking, about the discovery of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship.
After it was used to illegally kidnap and enslave more than 100 Africans, the 90-foot-long schooner was sunk near Mobile, Alabama, around 1860, decades after the international slave trade was outlawed. Until recently, it laid unfound somewhere in the muddy waters of the Mobile River, a lost, 160-year-old crime scene.
But B次元官网网址淒escendant,B次元官网网址� , is exponentially more than an account of finding the Clotilda in 2019. Brown roves across the land, crowding her film with a wide spectrum of voices B次元官网网址� community leaders, direct descendants from the Clotilda, passed-down accounts B次元官网网址� for a living oral history that reckons with the long shadow of slavery.
B次元官网网址淚 could care less about the ship,B次元官网网址� says Joycelyn Davis, one of the filmB次元官网网址檚 many vibrant, thoughtful subjects and a resident of Africatown, the Mobile hamlet founded by the ClotildaB次元官网网址檚 West Africans.
Modern-day Africatown is, itself, evidence of how systematic racism can operate. With the cityB次元官网网址檚 highest industrial zoning regulations, Africatown has long been surrounded by factories and refineries, leading to pollution and high local cancer rates. For B次元官网网址淒escendant,B次元官网网址� itB次元官网网址檚 a powerful illustration of how past and present perpetually intermingle in America.
B次元官网网址淒escendant,B次元官网网址� which Friday opens in select theaters and debuts on Netflix, is in many ways about storytelling as a form of resistance. Those that came on the Clotilda were warned not to tell anyone of their trafficking. The story went undocumented in history books. Instead, it was passed by word of mouth as local lore kept alive by descendants. Emmett Lewis, a particularly soulful descendant of Africatown founder Cudjo Lewis, describes it as B次元官网网址渁 ghost storyB次元官网网址� told to him by his father, and one he tells his young daughters.
For many, any clarity about the Clotilda is a way of adding definition to a severed heritage. One woman compares it to an adopted child searching for a parent. Among those who have learned that theyB次元官网网址檙e a Clotilda descendant is Ahmir B次元官网网址淨uestloveB次元官网网址� Thompson, an executive producer on the film.
At the same time, the shipB次元官网网址檚 finding raises other questions of justice and of reparations. For many of the descendants, itB次元官网网址檚 not a theoretical question. The slave-trafficking financier of the Clotilda, Timothy Meaher, may have died more than a century ago, but his family is still a wealthy landowner in the area. The Meaher name adorns a local park.
There are few certain answers supplied by B次元官网网址淒escendant,B次元官网网址� a film that carries the banner of Barack and Michelle ObamaB次元官网网址檚 production company, Higher Ground. But there is a searching, ruminative dialogue running throughout the film. Brown and editors Michael Bloch and Geoffrey Richman beautifully weave together disparate voices into a meditative chorus.
ItB次元官网网址檚 not just the living, either. Kern Jackson, a kindly folklorist and a central figure in the effort, plays a VHS tape of Mable Dennison, a descendant who wrote a biographical memoir of her grandfather, James Dennison, instructing others about their heritage. Brown also has many of the descendants read from Zora Neale HurstonB次元官网网址檚 B次元官网网址淏arracoon,B次元官网网址� a book based on her interviews in 1927 with Cudjo Lewis. It was surfaced only in 2018 by the author Alice Walker.
B次元官网网址淭he only fear,B次元官网网址� Emmett Lewis says in the filmB次元官网网址檚 final words, B次元官网网址渋s for my peopleB次元官网网址檚 story not to be told.B次元官网网址�
B次元官网网址淒escendant,B次元官网网址� a Netflix release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for thematic material, brief language and smoking images. Running time: 109 minutes. Four stars out of four.
B次元官网网址擩ake Coyle, The Associated Press
