NYFF: Steve McQueen's "Mangrove"

by Jason Adams

Well we knew the party couldn't last forever -- it's 2020 after all, and there's serious work to be done. Last week the New York Film Festival officially opened with Lovers Rock, the second part of Steve McQueen's five-part "Small Axe" series of films all set within the same West Indian community in London where McQueen grew up (and which are set to air on the BBC and Amazon starting at the end of November) -- Lovers Rock, which I reviewed at this link, was set over the course of a single night, a single party, and reveled in tactility and sound, in the moment; it allowed its characters to lose themselves in song and sex and joy. Tonight the NYFF rewinds back us to premiere Small Axe's first part, titled Mangrove and based on the famous legal battle of 1970 involving the so-dubbed "Mangrove Nine," a group of local activists who were wrongly accused of inciting a riot by a corrupt and racist police department.

So no, no big party here -- this one's a courtroom drama. And a rip-roaring one at that... Although it takes its time becoming exactly that...

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