One of the great protagonists of this edition of the Rome Film Fest 2020, the British director Steve McQueen (awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award) presents his first encounter with the television serial apparatus, or the anthological series Small Ax: five distinct films that tell the black Caribbean community in London, the difficulties of integration and the systematic racism of British institutions between 1969 and 1982. The title (the same as a piece by Bob Marley) refers to an old Jamaican proverb about strength of dissent: "A little ax can cut down a big tree". The series, which was supposed to be presented in competition at Cannes Festival 2020, explores the forms of the fight against racism through five stories of courage and determination, of which the Festival (unfortunately) projects only three (Mangrove, Lover's Rock e Red, White and Blue).
- Mangrove: In the late 60s, Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkers) manager of Mangrove café, a meeting place for the Caribbean community and for black intellectuals and activists in the Notting Hill neighborhood, was prey to intimidation and violence by the white police. Then when the community, fed up with the illegal and unjustified searches of the police in the room, decides to publicly protest with a peaceful demonstration, many demonstrators are violently subdued and arrested. The first episode of the series tells the true story of the trial of Crichlow and eight other defendants, renamed by the press the Mangrove Nine.
- Lovers Rock: the second episode of the series. The 80s, a night, a party, a love story and reggae music. Martha (Amarah-Jae St Aubyn) and Franklin (Michael Ward) meet and fall in love at a party in a small London suburban apartment, where blacks were not allowed to enter white-only nightclubs at the time and were therefore forced to meet in private homes. An ode to the romantic reggae musical category called (in fact) lovers rock and to the black youth who discovered love and freedom in its notes.
- Red, White and Blue: The last episode of the series. In the 80s, young Leroy Logan (John Boyega, Finn from the new Star Wars triology) makes a difficult decision after witnessing the violent assault of two racist policemen against his father: to join the Metropolitan Police Service in London, setting aside the his ambitions to become a forensic doctor as he dreamed of as a child, to change things from within. Facing the contempt of his father, neighborhood friends and his people and discrimination by his colleagues, Leroy does not intend to give up being a bridge for the new generations and creating a better future for the family and for the newborn son.
Ambition and message
Small Ax is arguably Steve McQueen's most ambitious project: to tell five stories of resistance and courage in the context of a rarely investigated systematically racist society, that of England and London. The highly acclaimed director of films such as Hunger (2008), Shame (2011) and 12 Anni Schiavo (which earned him the Oscar for Best Film in 2014) again models the body topos as a weapon, institution and symbol to claim a page of definitely close to home (born in West London in 1969, himself of Caribbean origin). The choice of different narrative genres confuses an inattentive look, but at the same time claims the multiplicity of a microcosm relegated by the (white) society of the time to clichés and racists of poverty and crime.
The anchoring of the series, the unmistakable style of the director made of sequence shots, very long shots and a cold photograph, works as a leitmotif of the series, representing a struggle between a dominated culture (the Caribbean one of music and color, passion and warmth) and another dominant (London dullness, attachment to tradition and the ghost of colonialism).
Small Ax is perhaps his least convincing work of Steve McQueen's artistic corpus, but which manages to elicit a strong discussion on institutional racism through the intimate story of a society, the English one, rarely questioned on issues of racial prejudice and on the politics of diversity.
