On the Importance of Sinning
Preamble
There is a moment about halfway through Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. If you’ve seen the movie, you know the one. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ve likely heard about it from at least one person who has. It is a moment in music, cinematography, genre, culture, art in general, that I suspect will be talked about for generations to come. Only a few times in my life have I come out of a film thinking “this is an instant classic,” (Mad Max: Fury Road, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Parasite, Tár), and Sinners might be the one that I think will hold the greatest cultural sway over the coming years. If you have not seen the movie, and “Original film from Ryan Coogler starring Michael B. Jordan x2” is not enough to sell you on it, I am going to do a brief spoiler-free review. But the less you know about this movie, the better.
It’s magic, what it does.
Sinners is many things: Historical/religious epic, crime thriller, quasi-musical, and a few other genres in the mix that I don’t want to spoil. Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers, Elijah and Elias (referred to as Smoke and Stack throughout the film), returning to their home plantation in the Mississippi Delta, with the intent of starting their very own Juke Joint. Joined by their younger cousin Sammie (a preacher’s son and a deeply talented guitarist), they embark on a journey gathering musicians and workers to help them prepare for a grand opening, facing people and events from their past that come back to haunt them and their hardened hearts.
There is a profound artistry to everything in this movie — the editing is deliberate and yet highly kinetic, propelling the saga of the brothers and their home community forward that effortlessly blends the difficulties of Black life in Mississippi during the depression with a hearty and hale community. Jordan’s performance as Smoke/Stack is so effortless that after their first scene where they cheekily hand a cigarette back and forth to showcase how good the compositing team is, it never once feels like they are being played by one person. Miles Caton plays Sammie, and his debut work was so phenomenal that I could only sigh and say “Goddammit” when I found out he’s only 20 years old. He acts, he sings (and what a voice…), and even dances a little to boot. A nigh on complete artistic package, and a perfect foil to Jordan’s career best work. The entire cast is phenomenal, and they are given great time to showcase their talents, with every character given sufficient time to fully personify themselves while setting the stage for the grand melting pot of genre and tone to come.
Coogler’s direction has always been phenomenal, and his trademark long-takes are here in seemingly effortless abundance. Of course, these all took countless hours if not days of planning, and that is one of the film’s greatest strengths: Threading countless nightmarish needles of filmmaking, and making it feel nigh-on effortless. What is particularly striking about this film is his screenwriting — while he has long worked as a writer/director, he has always either been working from a true story as in Fruitvale Station, or existing IPs a la Creed and Black Panther. Here at last, we see a completely original work from him, and all I have to say on the matter is that I think we should let this man do whatever he wants for the rest of his life. This film is deeply historically informed, in its dialogue, its setting, its handling of the music (which is a career best from Ludwig Göransson), and Coogler’s narrative threads all of these elements together.
That is about all I can say without spoiling the hell out of this movie, and I will soon get into that. But at the end of the day: If you love movies, odds are pretty good that you will love Sinners. I will caution people from seeing it only on the basis of some intense violence and gore, but I will say that my wife who is normally averse to all those things was completely fine with it and even went to see the movie with me a second time. Sinners is a once-in-a-generation experience, and you will want to have seen this one in the theater.
Part 1: I Lied To You.
If you haven’t seen the movie, this is the last chance you have to go do that before I give myself full leeway to talk about whatever I damn well please.
Okay?
Okay.
So if you’ve seen the movie you probably wondered why I at no point mentioned that Sinners is a vampire movie. While the trailers may have given the game away, I think that vampire-ascendant Remmick’s entrance into the film is such a perfect tonal shift from what has come before that it more than speaks for itself, and that the film is not hurt in any way by its sudden switch of genre. He quite literally falls into the film, a pale man burning in the sunset and finding refuge in the home of a KKK member whose innate prejudice against the Chocktaw tribesmen hunting him down dooms him and his wife. We will discuss more of what Remmick symbolizes later, but what I found so striking was just how much he serves as a tipping point for the movie.
Up till now, the film has been a fairly committed historical epic about community, with Sammie only briefly breaking into “Travelin’” to help establish that the young “Preacher Boy” does indeed have the juice. There have been some mild crime/gangster elements (the twins have returned from Chicago as hardened criminals seeking redemption and freedom), but nothing too out of the ordinary for the tone that has been established so far. Not long after Remmick’s entrance however, Sammie is invited by Delta Slim to sing for the guests of the Juke Joint, and here we get the Moment that I referred to at the beginning of this essay.
I don’t know how to talk about “I Lied To You,” if I’m being honest. As Sammie begins strumming that git-ar and letting his legitimately angelic voice sing a message to his father that he is not brave enough to speak to his face, we are given two short fragments of voiceover. One from Delta Slim, reminding Sammie of how fundamental the blues is to Afro-American culture, something that was not forced on their ancestors but that they took with them, that it is magic, what they do. The other from Smoke’s quasi-ex Annie, a woman versed in the spiritual and supernatural practices of the deep south. Reciting her words from the film’s beginning, she speaks of those whose gift of music is so great they can call forth the ancestors… and their descendants.
I don’t think anyone seeing this movie for the first time could have expected to see a 70s funk guitarist come into frame, soloing over-top Sammie’s blues ostinato. It was in this moment that I realized I was about to see something special, and through one continuous shot, we see Sammie’s music bring forth countless musicians and traditions. There is a DJ who overlays a rapid 16th note drum beat over Sammie’s triplets, African dancers, a gospel choir, a black ballerina, more cultures and connections than I have the words to describe, all in one continuous take through the Juke Joint. There are so many bodies onscreen I struggle to imagine how in the hell they’re navigating the camera through all of them, let alone with the dozen-odd different choreographic styles all weaving through one another.
How is this real? was the overwhelming thought running through my head as the scene progressed. This wasn’t just a brief aside like “Travelin’,” the scene had more or less turned the film into a full on musical. But more than that… as an artist, I’ve often struggled to convey the sensation I have in experiencing any work of art, that being the myriad connections it carries to that which came before and after. I’ve written a whole blog mulling on that and how essential it is to my conception of music (and what I think music is writ large), and then here’s a scene in a movie that just illustrates it perfectly.
Music is sound, of course, but it is also memory. It is connection. It is history. It is the meaning we strive to give to it. And in this scene, Coogler shows every single one of those elements, using no words other than those Sammie is using to express his love of the Blues. It’s rare that I get to say this about any work of art, but I felt legitimate euphoria at this moment. It’s still so difficult for me to put in the words, but if you’ve seen this sequence, you know precisely what I am talking about. In all the myriad discourses on this movie, I don’t know a single person who has come away from it not feeling that. That is something truly special. I do not believe music or film are universal languages, not in the slightest — but goddamn if this doesn’t come close. If Remmick’s arrival was the catalyst for the film to become something different, this is when the film (through the power of its musical melting pot) opens itself to become anything it wants to.
Part 2: A Rocky Road to Salvation
Returning to the vampires. I’ve seen some discourse around them turning the film into something hokier, more genre fare than the serious historical epic that we’ve seen so far. While this is not strictly speaking untrue, the true masterstroke is how Coogler remixes/reframes the vampire’s tropes into something far more thematic to the story at hand. If Sinners is primarily a story of community, of artistic authenticity, finding that which is true to yourself (it is all these things and more), Remmick and his growing clan of thralls serve as dark reflections of all of them.
Mariana Colin has an excellent vlog discussing the film and the vampire’s role as cultural appropriators. Taking the vampire as a consumptive entity who can only feel during the act of their consumption, who is otherwise haunted by their ravenous hunger, it is by no means an unfamiliar dynamic for the monster, but in this framing of a white man craving the spiritual magic of the Blues… There is clearly a different flavor to this presentation. Sammie’s voice calls not only the spirits of his ancestors and his descendants, but something that craves that magic.
While it has been discussed, one of the fascinating elements of Remmick’s role is that as an Irish vampire, he has his own share of cultural baggage with appropriation and oppression. Some of his last words in the film imply that he is old enough to predate the arrival of Christians in Ireland, and this choice is so subtle yet so striking. Its illustration of how people and cultures can adopt the framing and mindset of their oppressors, and this is further expounded in the film’s nigh on perfect climax.
Once a sufficient number of the Juke Joint attendees have been consumed by Remmick and added to his flock (including Stack and his lost love Mary), they attempt a negotiation with the surviving members who have stayed inside. Remmick offers a life of eternity, one that is highly appealing to the enthralled Stack and Mary as an interracial couple in 1930s Mississippi. A perfect life, but inevitably separated from the warmth of a sunrise, the truth and beauty of music that Remmick craves from Sammie.
A brief aside, but one of my favorite lines in the film occurs here after Remmick promises to leave the surviving party members alone if they will just give him Sammie and that wonderful gift of music. Delta Slim, an old hardened Blues man, rebuts him: “You can’t have him. He belongs to us- he belongs with us.” Slim knows what a shame it would be to lock up and confine a talent like Sammie’s. That music does not belong to anyone, but it should certainly be kept among those who understand it and do not wish to drain it of its vitality, its life force.
Returning to the promise of salvation, what makes Remmick’s evangelical vampirism such a striking image is in that ending. The film’s in media res opening sees Sammie’s return home to his preacher father, who begs him to repent in the name of God, to put down that guitar, to accept eternal salvation. At the beginning of the film, the shadowy flashes of Remmick that interject perhaps don’t make the most sense, but Sammie has seen what those offering eternity really have to offer. He is, in Remmick’s eyes, someone who can be redeemed by eternal life and give his gifts to the world forever. He is, in his father’s eyes, someone who can be redeemed by eternal life and salvation. Both salvations would come at the cost of his musical truth, and so he accepts his life as a sinner then and there.
All of this is said with nary a single line of dialogue to drive it home, and it is all the better for it. That Christianity was forced upon Remmick, upon Sammie’s ancestors, and that Remmick and his father both seek to spread their gospel at the cost of something vital to your humanity and selfhood, that is something truly brilliant. Sinners does not draw attention to the significance of its title, but in making the choice to die rather than be subsumed by the forces that would seek to oppress them, the ensemble are all sinners in their own right.
Part 3: Freedom Under A Pale Moon
Michael B. Jordan’s collaborations with Ryan Coogler have (in my view) been a series of slam dunks, from Fruitvale Station to Creed to Black Panther. As a director/performer collaboration, this streak was already enough to enter a pantheon of legend, and Jordan’s dual performance as Smoke and Stack is a new zenith for the pair. I could go on and on about the subtleties of Jordan’s performance(s), the intricacies of his body language between the brothers, Smoke’s more clipped speech contrasted with Stack’s smooth-talkin’ elided mannerisms. The brothers wear distinct hats early on to help clarify who is who, and while they look great, it is ultimately unnecessary with how profoundly Jordan realizes each brother.
The brothers’ journey is a battle for freedom, one of escaping their abusive father, the pain and baggage of their life in the Delta, a journey to war, and seeking riches with the Chicago mafia. These men are quite literally battle-hardened, and it is fascinating to see how their reactions to those battles inform their actions in the film. Stack, as mentioned, is more smooth-talking and generally relaxed than his brother, willing to play fast and loose with the rules. Smoke, by contrast, has a much sharper view of what power means in the world, believing that money is the only thing that can truly carry him and his brother through the world.
In the subtle differences between the two brothers, we see one of the many great strengths of Sinners, that being its capacity to say a lot with very little. I’ve already mentioned the unspoken parallels between evangelical vampirism and Christianity within the movie, but the ways the brothers carry themselves through the world says so much about them as people, and the relationships they hold with the world at large. Smoke’s extreme composure and unwillingness to compromise his image (shooting a man who tried and quickly stopped trying to rob him just so no one can claim to have gotten one over on the Smokestack Twins), Stack’s smooth talking, his willingness to take the Plantation money that is no good out in the wider world at the Juke Joint, these brilliantly realize the two brothers.
The two find additional mirrors/foils in their reunions with their loves of old. Smoke’s ex-wife Annie is a phenomenal cook and a master of herbal remedies in her community, a woman spiritually engaged with traditions out of the Louisiana bayou. The two still love each other very dearly, even with Annie’s disdain towards Smoke’s focus on money and Smoke’s questioning of her beliefs in magic. Their shared grief for their lost baby is something that haunts them both, but holds them together nonetheless.
Stack’s ex, Mary, daughter of a half-Black man who married a white woman, is in town for her mother’s funeral, and is rather shocked and appalled by the twin’s unannounced return. Her relationship with Stack was far more complicated, but most of her pain comes ‘round to the fact that when he left, she came into a life that she did not want. Stack’s confession of how he could not envision a future for the white-passing woman and him as a Black man in the Jim Crow south is already heartbreaking in its own right, further enhanced by the un-commented upon Whites Only/Blacks Only segregation that has defined most of the spaces our characters traverse in the film, be it the segregated train station or the two halves of the main street in Clarksdale. As strong as Smoke and Stack are, as confidently as they comport themselves, they do not risk moving to the wrong side of the street.
The brothers’ struggle for freedom forks in its culmination, sending the two down very different paths. After Mary is turned by Remmick and his trio, the hallucinatory joy that vampirism inflicts in this film overwhelms her. Immortality, nigh-on invulnerability to those who would seek to hurt her and her lover. She may be a thrall to Remmick, but the gateway to a world where they can be together has been flung open for her. Consuming Stack during a wildly horny sex scene (I will not yum anyone’s yucks, it is 100% nasty to me, but I just have to praise the movie for having her spit in his mouth), the two cannot help but espouse the joys of vampire life to those still living within the Juke Joint. As the sole vampiric survivors of the battle between living and dead, the two are ultimately able to “live” a life together due to Smoke’s mercy and refusal to kill his brother a second time.
Smoke’s life is ultimately cut short in a different manner to his brother’s: Having been forced to kill a recently bitten Annie (who assured him that she had someone waiting for her in the afterlife), he ends up as the man who is able to deal the killing blow to Remmick and surviving to sunrise alongside Sammie. While waiting for the KKK to show up and mete out some justice (having purchased the location for the Juke Joint from the grand dragon of the Klan), we see him battling a hand tremor that has haunted him all movie, trying and failing to make a cigarette. Stack always handled that.
The scene where Smoke annihilates the KKK members with a high powered rifle, grenades, and a tommygun is deeply satisfying and cathartic, something that reminds me of Inglourious Basterds’ incredible Nazi-burning climax. It is not something that is related to the plot in the strictest sense, but as a moment of catharsis after the cluster of white vampires have taken so many Black lives through the course of the night, it is a wonderful little bow on top of everything. Smoke is injured in the struggle, and as he falls to the ground, the burbling cry of a baby sneaks in from offscreen. Annie is there with their beautiful baby child who had been taken from them so many years ago, and as she calls him by his given name Elijah, he is reunited with those who left him behind.
The brothers’ fates are varyingly tragic and uplifting at the same time. Even if neither survive, they find solace in their fates. It is no coincidence that they are reunited with the women they love, when both have so long run from the pain that their love has brought them. In the film’s mid-credits epilogue (which mercifully sets up no expanded universe, simply closes off the last few questions a viewer might have had), Sammie asks Stack what that night was for him. For Sammie, before the sun went down, it was the best day of his life life. “Was it like that for you?”
“No doubt about it. Last time I seen my brother. Last time I seen the sun. And just for a few hours, we was free.”
Perfect words to end a perfect journey. While no one escaped that night unscathed, it ultimately shaped them for the better and gave them a path to what they wanted. Sammie pursued his music. Mary and Stack could live their life together. Elijah and Annie reunited with their baby. Remmick died seeing the sun.
Part 4: “I want your music. I want your stories.”
I’d intended to have this essay done a lot sooner, but I’m rather glad of the delay because now some painfully relevant material has cropped up in the musical world. Rosephanye Powell’s “The Word Was God,” an invigorating setting of text from the Gospel of John, was just plagiarized by (white) choral directors/arrangers from Indiana Bible College. Dr. Powell has posted an extensive video breaking down a history of questionable behavior on IBC’s part with regards to the piece. Between unlicensed arrangements with instrumental parts (which Dr. Powell explains goes against the whole conceit of the piece) and now just… giving the piece a new name/key and calling it something original, it feels strongly relevant to the themes of Sinners.
As I’ve said before, music is always in dialogue with itself. There is perpetual cross-pollination of ideas and themes in this world, always has been and always will. As Rax King notes in her essay on Mary’s temptation, Remmick’s Irish folk music is its own powerful counterpart to Sammie’s blues, and in the astounding performance of Rocky Road to Dublin we hear a vampiric singer add her own Gospel flavored cries to the song’s ending moments. Perhaps there is some room for synergy that is nonetheless corrupted by Remmick’s colonizing antics.
What is happening here with Dr. Powell is something far different. It is the sort of cultural vampirism the film is perhaps most firmly set against. As I write this, IBC has currently attempted to sue Dr. Powell. It’s incredibly obvious what horseshit this is, a transparent attempt to save face against the appropriation of a Black woman’s music. Stories like these are why a movie like Sinners feels so viscerally important in the here and now. While the film’s view of the vampiric is not without sympathy, not without a belief that they can be something somewhat better than their base origins (see Stack and Mary’s genuinely heartfelt reunion with Sammie in the epilogue), there is a dangerous core that cannot be avoided. Stack does not connect to much of the music Sammie plays nowadays, asking if he can play something that will remind him of better days. He is disconnected from the vital life force that animates Sammie yet (and that we hear Buddy Guy brilliantly rocking out with over the film’s first batch of credits). He at the very least understands the music’s importance to him.
I’m not 100% certain what more I can say about the situation between IBC and Dr. Powell as a white woman. One thing I will say is that it’s the sort of situation that makes me wonder if the film was perhaps too sympathetic to the cultural/artistic vampire it crafted. Just as Remmick offers salvation through violent consumption, a desperate pain, IBC’s attempt to threaten Dr. Powell into silence is a reflection of that colonialist instinct to save marginalized people from themselves. “Just let us take your music. Let us alter its shape, its theme, its form. We know better. We will fix it. Just let us take it.”
What that “it” is will vary. It could be your music. It could be your life. Your very soul. If Sinners has one message above all, I think it’s that you cannot let them take that soul from you.
Part 5: I’ve Seen Enough Of This Place
This film is deeply timely in a multitude of ways, proving to be one of the highest grossing original films of all time in a world that is currently determined to make “Go woke go broke” a defining element of art-making. We get to see a beautiful and historically crafted epic that is wildly diverse, informed in its culture, and we get to see the forces that invade that culture be beaten back. There are always things we can learn from one another, but it cannot be at the cost of one culture violently consuming the other. It’s also always great to see KKK members get their shit rocked.
I feel as if I could keep writing forever about this film, one so loaded with detail it just overwhelms me thinking about it. It is a technical, emotional, and thematic tour-de-force that gives me a profound sense of optimism for the future of cinema. Its success is one that cannot be denied, and it brings so much to the table that every person who sees it will have a variety of ideas and messages they can take from it. For me, in this point in time where everything fucking sucks…
I’m going to keep making my music. I’m going to keep singing. I’m going to keep playing. I’m going to keep sinning.
And be particularly mindful of any people offering me salvation along the rocky road I walk.