by Patrick Ball
In Rebecca Hall’s devastatingly delicate Passing, light plays a powerful role. One I haven't seen in many films before. The use and placement of natural and artificial light introduces and reintroduces us to the characters over and over. Depending on how the situation suits them, they bask in it, hide from it, are able to play up their ruses, daring us to look a little closer, or cling to shadows, to the safety of the shade.
As many of us in America came to a new and widened understanding of the foundational race issues in our country following the deaths of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor last year, and the resulting national reckoning that came after, I spent a lot of time considering how my experience as an “ethnically ambiguous” mixed-race black person has shaped my perception of race, and of media. In Passing, Tessa Thompson’s Irene wryly remarks to a white acquaintance that “we all are passing for something or another, aren’t we?” And isn’t that at the heart of the imposter syndrome we all feel at a new job or opportunity, the shades of ourselves we put on in social gatherings, the walls we build to hide our flaws and insecurities? There is something universal in the facade...
But, it’s also deeply specific to the black experience. Passing opens with a scene where Irene is shopping for a book that she can’t seem to find. Her only option is to continue her search at stores normally not an option for her, to puff on some white powder, don a wide brimmed hat, and keep her eyes low. The stakes are low, she’ll survive without the book, but the deception is both a necessary evil and something that wields a curious power.
There is, of course, an element of privilege in being able to pass. My family on my maternal grandmother’s side comes from a light skinned Creole background and many of my family members were able to pass in white society, intentionally or not. Because they were fair skinned, educated, and whatever their white neighbors considered to be “non-colored” traits, they were simply assumed to be so. Perception was their reality. My Grandmother Daisy was born in a white hospital, during segregation, many of her aunts when they aged were placed in white nursing homes, and many acquaintances of my grandmother’s never knew. To be clear, my grandmother owned her blackness, she never intentionally passed, she was beautifully vibrant, funny, tough, full of life and proud of her heritage. But in public, strangers' perception wasn’t up to her. And for many of the generations before her, it was a matter of life and death to be able to pass, a privilege not afforded to their brothers and sisters without such a complexion.
As America moved through the age of the civil rights movement, an evolving conversation about colorism trickled onto the big screen, and into Oscar history. There’s Douglas Sirk’s genius Imitation of Life (1959), a sly and subversive piece of prestige fare, which used the veneer of melodrama to comment on the shadowy uncomfortable truths beneath the bright lights of 50s Hollywood’s portrayal of American society. A subplot involving the fair skinned daughter of a black maid and her quest to deny both her heritage and her mother, to a tragic end, ended up dominating the film. It earned Oscar nominations for both Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner, as the mother and daughter respectively, and remains a prescient and probing exploration of race in America, even all these years later.
Imitation of Life
Secrets & Lies
There’s also Mike Leigh’s excellent Secrets & Lies, a Best Picture nominee from 1996, which portrays the ripples across a white working class London family when they discover that their matriarch previously gave up a child for adoption. Her now adult biracial daughter finds her. And though the daughter hasn’t the ability, nor the intention, to pass, the delicate situation of integrating into a white culture and family structure, and the family’s ability to process the unexpected, provides well wrought tension.
But there haven't been nearly enough projects greenlit that depict this fascinating part of the conversation about race in America from an authentic perspective, certainly not enough that have been given the platform to attract Oscar’s attention. Both of the aforementioned films came from white creators and Passing’s Rebecca Hall, whose grandfather is of black ancestry, self identifies as white-presenting and doesn’t consider herself to have been raised or “gone through the world as a black person.” But, her fascination with this project, and what she gets so beautifully right about it, comes from, as she describes, “the nuance and paradox” of her personal history and that of the characters.
When we first meet the blonde and buoyant Clare in Passing, played with beguiling fearlessness by the remarkable Ruth Negga, she’s holding court in an upper class white restaurant, bathed in the sun pouring in from the large windows, and emboldened like a spotlit Diva before her captive audience. Who really has the power here? And who is the fool? But, it’s a lonely place, in the spotlight, and when she follows Irene back to the more humble lights of beautifully black Harlem, she reexperiences a different kind of power. The power of community, of pride, of the everyday courage of the ordinary, and the connective bond of the oppressed. For these two friends, living parallel experiences that somehow cross, there’s a pull that comes from the danger, a magnetism that comes with curiosity. I know in my life, and doubtless in my family’s, being able to toe a line between two worlds has felt as much a curse as a blessing. There’s always been struggle with that duality. But, what Passing reminded me was that with a gentle hand, with a soft but insistent focus on relationships over anything else, and with the passion of our convictions, leaving a light on for the conversation to continue behind us is always a great start at finding home.
Passing is streaming on Netflix now.