Rating: 4/5
Criterion Challenge 2023 | 31/52 | Directed by Melvin Van Peebles
Sire, these lines are not a homage to brutality that the artist has invented but a hymn from the mouth of reality...
A child with spotty hair and a ruffed-up face, eating as quickly as he can manage. A line of women gives him food.
One woman takes him aside, removes her robe, and undresses him. She pulls him on top of her and makes him have sex with her.
Flash forward, and he’s an adult nicknamed Sweetback for his sweet back.
The police want to question someone about a murder. Anyone, to make it look like the police are working.
They take Sweetback. He looks away while they beat a black man up. But he can’t stand it. He takes his cuffs, turns them into knuckles, and bashes them bloody.
The film follows Sweetback’s odyssey as he fights and fucks for safe passage through the streets.
— That's not him. — So what?
A surreal collection of kaleidoscopic imagery. Images overlay each other, freeze, and start. The world turns pure black, and spotlights from nowhere highlight everyone.
Melvin Van Peebles had four goals in making this film.
He didn’t want to cop out on his ideals.
He wanted it to have a high-quality production. He wanted it to look as good as “anything the Man has ever done.”
“Entertainment-wise, I want it to be a motherfucker.”
He wanted it to be a living workshop — for the folks he helped continue to help others and not just themselves.
He wanted to make a movie where Black folks won. Turns out, others did as well. This started the wave of blaxploitation films, where white filmmakers trimmed off the edges to make something they could sell back to black folks.
This is a messy film. It didn’t have an example to follow, so it became one.