2021 Oscars Review: Judas and the Black Messiah
Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya, foreground) and William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield, background). Both are nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 93rd Academy Awards.
As many of you know from following our project, we have watched all of the Academy Awards’ Best Picture nominees going back through 2010. Since 2015, we have watched them all prior to the awards ceremony. That streak will continue this year. This is our first review of a movie nominated for major prizes at the upcoming 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, 2021. Here, Tom discusses a movie he looked forward to from the second he watched the first trailer: Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah, which is nominated for Best Picture, Supporting Actor (twice), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, and Original Song. It is currently not available on streaming services but will be available to rent on April 2.
“You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation. You can murder a revolutionary, but you can’t murder revolution. And you can murder a freedom fighter, but you can’t murder freedom!”
Fred Hampton’s story was made for the big screen. A young man from Chicago with the innate charisma and oratory skills to rival any of the greatest speakers in history, Chairman Fred burned bright and fast. He took the mantle from his predecessors like Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, and Huey P. Newton and pushed their Black Panther Party movement to the next level. He shot daggers criticizing capitalism and the police as a teenager, long before present-day teenagers were doing the same in Ted Cruz’s mentions on Twitter. But perhaps even more importantly, his Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers led a free breakfast program which fed thousands of children in Chicago every day, provided free healthcare to the city, and helped gang members clean up their act and join the revolution. And for a brief moment in time, he united struggling working class people of many different races into a “Rainbow Coalition” against what he perceived to be the true enemy: capitalist structures which permitted police brutality and institutional racism to further the government’s goals of oppression and sowing discord among likeminded people.
Yet for all of his leadership and his ability to bring together Chicago’s working class like no one else, Hampton is a tertiary historical figure to those who have not studied much of the 1960s and that era’s American civil rights movement. Growing up, schools teach (selectively) about the lives and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and many others, but rarely a peep about Fred Hampton, the man who brought together the aforementioned Rainbow Coalition consisting of various Black, white, Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Native American groups who had been oppressed in the Chicago area and nationwide. Why is that? It’s because the United States government saw the development of a “Black messiah” with the rare ability to unite struggling communities across race and color lines and awaken them to the true enemy: the oppressive systems of the United States government. Sensing a threat to its stranglehold of power, the FBI and then-Director J. Edgar Hoover set out to use the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO program to quell Hampton’s flame before his uprising had truly begun to rage.
Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) acts as the focal point and the subject of Judas and the Black Messiah. However, the film tells his story through the eyes of William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), a petty criminal-turned-FBI informant tasked by Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) to assist the Bureau’s effort to eliminate Hampton. In exchange, Mitchell promises O’Neal freedom from a prison sentence for grand theft auto and impersonating a federal officer. O’Neal hesitantly accepts, joins Hampton’s Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and works his way into Hampton’s inner circle in order to bring him down and avoid prison time. As the screenwriters who pitched the film, College of New Jersey legends Keith and Kenny Lucas, described it to director Shaka King, it’s sort of a “The Departed meets COINTELPRO” concept.
With that premise, the movie could not have been better cast. Kaluuya, star of Get Out, Widows, and Queen & Slim, among others, probably locked himself up a Best Supporting Actor award by delivering a performance which was resolute and forceful while Hampton was in public, yet reserved and tender in private. At one point, there was a slight controversy regarding the casting of a British actor to play an American civil rights icon, but since I am certainly not in a position to debate the merits of that argument, I will just say that Kaluuya was a force of nature in this movie and is one of the best actors working right now. I’ve been a fan of his since his starring role in the “Fifteen Million Merits” episode of Black Mirror, and he just continues to get better. He brought the intensity and emotion needed to represent a singularly charismatic figure like Hampton, and I felt my eyes drawn to him every time he was onscreen. His screentime constantly felt like it mattered.
King had a clear vision of what he wanted to get across to the viewer, although he rued the tight budget and time constraints given to him by the studio. In an excellent interview with Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker, King described the process of getting the film made and the realities of time constraints and budget issues for a film about a complex, challenging figure like Hampton. King stated:
[W]hen you couch a political movie in genre, you have to keep the people who came to the movie for the invested in the genre, while also trying to give them the politics of it. So, it’s tricky. And we tried. I mean, the first words you hear Fred Hampton speak are “We’re not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism.” We were intentional with that. Like, O.K., say it, but then, let’s see it practiced. What does a socialist life style look like? There’s this coalition-building, people living together, always talking about the people, the people, the people—versus, in O’Neal, someone who’s embraced a more capitalist ideology. What’s that look like? Individualistic, self-interested: “I want this. I will attain this by any means necessary.” And so, we tried to express up top and then personify throughout. And I think we threaded the needle pretty damn well.
If that’s King’s intention, he succeeds. In framing the movie through O’Neal’s eyes, he allows the viewer to determine the accuracy of Agent Mitchell’s claim in the beginning of the film that “the Panthers and the Klan are one and the same.” While the film doesn’t shy away from some of Hampton’s radical views and the violent war between the Panthers and the local police, it’s clear from King’s point-of-view choice and his decision to show Hampton, along with O’Neal, providing assistance to Black people in the city that King wants the viewer to learn that the Panthers were not, in fact, a hate group like the Ku Klux Klan. Rather, they mostly act in self-defense against a tyrannical government. In fact, the entire concept of the movie (and the true events it was based on) shows that Hampton and the Panthers’ distrust of the local, state, and national systems was (and, King argues, still is) well-founded.
And while the political message is strong, the performances are the strongest part of the film. Stanfield is the perfect actor to subtly convey the wide range of complex emotions needed to portray O’Neal: fear, doubt, hope, anger, skepticism, hesitancy, admiration, and even love, among others. Stanfield’s excellence shines predominantly through his tortured facial expressions, which have become the linchpin of his acting ability in movies like Get Out, Uncut Gems, and Sorry to Bother You, as well as FX’s Atlanta. Given that O’Neal is tasked with walking the razor’s edge and infiltrating an organization where he ended up legitimately understanding and respecting his target while under the gun from the FBI, Stanfield is the perfect actor for this part and kept up his run of strong performances.
Kaluuya, conversely, has the much flashier role as Hampton, and he likewise delivers. With O’Neal positioned as a blank slate through whose eyes the viewer observes Hampton, Kaluuya gets ample time to explain Hampton’s worldview and goals - through both words and action - and display just how dynamic Chairman Fred was. As I mentioned, I’ve been a Kaluuya fan for a while, but even as I was watching, I felt he melted into the role of Hampton and seemed indistinguishable from the man himself. And while Hampton was as publicly intense a figure as it gets, Kaluuya balances his militant demeanor with the type of shy, tender quietness and sincerity we saw from him in Get Out (and, to a lesser extent, Sicario), while in private with his girlfriend Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback). Kaluuya’s performance is transcendent and even though both he and Stanfield are nominated for Best Supporting Actor, I don’t think that the vote-splitting will be an issue. Kaluuya deserves the award. He’s one of the best we’ve got.
As for the rest of the supporting cast, Jesse Plemons is a perpetual scene stealer (specifically in Black Mirror, Breaking Bad, and Game Night), but in this one he reins himself in and lets Stanfield cook. I spoke with a friend the other day about the talent and self-awareness it takes to actively try not to be the focal point of every scene, and that’s exactly how I’d describe Plemons’ sarcastic and oddly personable performance as Agent Mitchell. Mitchell clearly bought in to the FBI’s propaganda although, thanks to Plemons’ performance, he doesn’t seem like a bad guy at heart. Nevertheless, he does exactly what he needs to do for most of the movie to appear as if he’s on O’Neal’s side, which triggers Stanfield’s aforementioned performance. Like always, Plemons is a key contributor to what made the movie so good and Mitchell is a compelling foil to O’Neal.
While Plemons is a well-known actor who is a staple in supporting roles the last few years, Dominique Fishback, who played Deborah Johnson, is a relative newcomer. Her major roles to this point came as Kenya, the protagonist’s best friend in The Hate U Give, and as a series regular on HBO’s The Deuce. Nevertheless, she helps carry the film in a variety of ways: 1) she assists in getting across just how young Hampton was, although the movie generally doesn’t establish that well (see my issues below); 2) she effectively provides a demigod figure in Hampton with an intellectual equal - and in some ways, an intellectual superior; and 3) she grounds the film as the emotional center. Without Fishback’s performance, the movie would have fallen apart and lacked much of its emotional punch.
This all being said, the movie isn’t perfect. As noted, I felt it doesn’t establish Hampton’s age well enough. Throughout the events of the film, he is 19- to 21-years old. That’s it! The FBI saw a man that young as a threat to its existence. What were you doing when you were 19, 20, 21 years old? I’ll tell you what I was doing: it mostly involved hanging out on TCNJ’s campus eating terrible sushi and chasing bottom-shelf vodka with Mountain Dew Code Red. I was not a revolutionary and a target of the most powerful and one of the most insidious organizations on planet Earth. Especially given that Kaluuya is 32 years old, I feel concretely establishing Hampton’s age (or at least his general youth) before the end credits would have further contextualized how tragic his story is.
Also - and I think this was a storytelling choice based on time constraints rather than an objective shortcoming - the movie doesn’t give the viewer much reason to care about O’Neal’s predicament. While he’s technically the protagonist and point-of-view character (and was submitted for the Lead Actor award), we learn nothing about him other than his criminal history and his relative lack of political convictions at the start. We hear nothing about his family or any friends from his time prior to being an FBI informant and we gain no other background information. Nor do we truly understand his motivations besides avoiding prison. King relies on Stanfield himself to grab the audience and act as its conduit to absorb Hampton, and he succeeds to a degree on the back of Stanfield’s superb performance. There just isn’t a whole lot for me to get behind when it comes to O’Neal in particular. I connected with Fred and Deborah, but not as much with O’Neal, who has the most screentime.
Overall, though, Judas and the Black Messiah is an unflinching, fascinating movie and necessary viewing for a fuller understanding of the Black civil rights struggle, which I am still learning about myself. He may not be a name that you have heard much about, but the story of Fred Hampton is essential to American history. Backed by an otherworldly performance by Daniel Kaluuya, excellent work from Stanfield, Plemons, and Fishback, and coupled with the vision of King, the Lucas Brothers, and co-writer Will Berson, Judas and the Black Messiah certainly deserves its Best Picture nomination and if you haven’t seen it yet, you absolutely should.
Rating: 8.5/10
And, if you’re interested in learning more about Hampton, the Black Panther Party, or the making of the film, you should check out the official companion podcast in which a movie critic interviews Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. and Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), who both consulted on the film, as well as co-producer Ryan Coogler, Kaluuya, Stanfield, and Fishback.