Sinners the Movie: But What About the White Guy?

 

CAREFUL: SOME MINOR SPOILERS

I already knew before I started watching Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” that there was a vampire in there somewhere and if the word vampire even appears in passing, I’m in, both feet, and up to my neck – if you’ll pardon the pun.

My first tingle of connection with the legendary blood suckers was when in my pre-teens I discovered a road near to my then home was named after Sheridan LeFanu, writer of the vampire novel “Carmilla”, which predates Stoker’s Dracula (another Irishman). The road led down a steep hill to the little village of Chapelizod, where LeFanu lived for a time and even set some of his stories.

I’m fairly certain I wasn’t aware at that stage that Carmilla was the first depiction of a lesbian vampire in modern western fiction, and I’d say the De La Salle brothers in the school I was attending weren’t either, since they didn’t object to me reading it in the schoolyard and the edge of playing pitches I otherwise wouldn’t ever get close to, but it got me hooked and I’m still not cured.

Zoom forward half a century or more, past Dracula, Kurt Barlow, and every one of the other manifestations of the blood sucking fiend and here we are right up to date with the mysterious Remmick, but more about him later.

For the first half of the movie, we’re treated to engrossing African/American characters and blues music that worms its way under your skin until you realise your heart is beating in rhythm with the score.

Michael B Jordan plays identical twins who return home to open a juke joint and set in motion a series of events that leads to the final showdown with the vampires.

Coogler’s stylish direction and cinematography – a slightly toned down version seen in creating Wakanada for the screen – sweeps you up in such a way that you don’t realise this is horror or that nothing supernatural has happened until midway through the movie.

That may well be due to the layers of interest the characters have already begun to uncover, showing how their world looks and operates in 1932 in the southern states. It could also be due to the mesmerizing music that hasn’t even begun to weave its deepest spells yet.

The development of the music from single genre – blues, jazz, R&B, soul – to a cauldron of sounds that create real magic and, juxtaposed with haunting Irish ballads and jigs, becomes as iconic as the duelling banjos in Deliverance (1972).

I’m not going to go into huge detail in relation to the remainder of the story itself, you deserve to discover that as it emerges on screen, but once the Choctaw vampire hunters appear (yep you read that right), you know things are about to get real, or unreal depending on your personal viewpoint.

We discover Remmick (the Big Bad played wonderfully by Jack O’Connell) is a vampire so old he predates Christianity in Ireland, where that religion has reigned supreme for over a thousand years. His response to the music breaking the realms of past, present and future emanating from the juke joint is caused by his desire to reconnect with his own past through his own musical traditions, as much as it is to feed and dominate.

This leads to two amazing scenes relating to the supernatural capabilities of music when it’s performed at a very high and primeval level.

The first is the scene where all of the African/American music melds (I Lied to Him) and breaks down the barriers of space and time.

The second is when the ever expanding group of vampires, linked mentally to Remmick, perform a feverish version of ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin”, while dancing in a circle reminiscent of both Native American mythology and Irish fairy rings – gateways to the Otherworld.

My reaction to the bad guy being not just white but Irish too, was at first in jest, but the discomfort it later brought me – white male fragility on display I suppose – was deepening as I realised the way Remmick’s Irishness and whiteness was representative of all of white supremacy of the time and sadly to this day.

I suppose to understand a little better my reaction you’d have to be aware that when the Irish arrived in the US (when they were still British colonies just like Ireland), they weren’t actually considered white in a cultural or societal sense and they too were treated as all non-whites were treated, badly. In fact most of them were, in the early days, indentured servants, little more than slaves.

It wasn’t until after the American civil war, where they aligned heavily with white supremacy in an effort to fit in, that the Irish began to be viewed as white.

Ironically it wasn’t until the late 19th century when they began to “colonise” key elements of service provision like the police force and fire services that they gained enough power to be fully accepted into the “white” community.

It was this knowledge that drove my unease about Remmick and his attempt to persuade the black characters to “join” him in what he proposed was a family of equals. The simple betrayal was the shameful act, even more than the obvious racist undertone. The once oppressed becoming the oppressor.

In fact the theme of betrayal is deepened by the fact he clearly preyed earlier on the Choctaw people for them to unleash their hunters on him. A nation that, despite their own poverty, less than a hundred years earlier sent considerable sums of money to starving people in Ireland during the Great Famine, a fact that is remembered and commemorated in Ireland to this day.

All of this to say that Coogler has put so much thought and research into this movie that one could write many an academic treatise on those layers – music, society, equality, culture, myth, etc. But most important of all for a vampire lover (too strong a word? I think not) he also manages to provide a thrilling ride and escape from reality.

I can’t help wondering if this movie might lead to prequels or sequels, given its box office success. I know what I’d like to see most – what happened before Remmick’s arrival that caused him to be chased by the Choctaw vampire hunters? I live in hope.