Certainly due to the greatly expanded diversity of films on offer on the big screen, coming back home as resulted in a marked increase in average quality viewing. Today's instalment: Detroit.
Detroit is the 10th feature film directed by Katherine Bigelow, director of fast paced violent thrillers which in the course of time evolved into equally fast paced reflections on America's (violent) history and identity, close in style maybe to Walter Hill or Renny Harlan, in output pace more to Stanley Kubrick or Terrence Mallick. Never boring, Bigelow has of late become indispensable, as her previous Zero DarkThirty (2012) and now Detroit attest.
Detroit tells a true story from a chapter of History which, contrary to what some might wish to think, is not known remotely well enough, namely the history of segregation, discrimination and oppression of African Americans, in this instance an episode of police brutality during the Detroit racial riots of 1967, starting with a forceful docudrama style portrayal of the events unleashed and proceeding to zero in on the main event, a group of Detroit PD agents brutalizing and terrorizing a group of “sniper suspects”, ultimately murdering 3, and concluding with the trial of the agents and its aftermath: the indicted were released because two confessions were obtained in the absence of an attorney.
Detroit is Katherine Bigelow in full swing, keeping for almost 2,5 hours a level of tension seldom seen outside of William Friedkin's films, and offering 3 films in 1, from the panoramic sequences of the street riots to the drama of the police interrogation, the latter second only in my memory to William Wyler's The Desperate Hours (1955), concluding with a brief courtroom drama with tragic denouement. Detroit pulls no punches but exercises restraint and sobriety throughout, as it flows from grand tableau to huis clos. The director's heart is with the action, so the politics lashes back constantly that much more eloquently.
Another powerful addiction to 2017´s increasingly rich vintage, Detroit also includes The MacMahonian's first entry for best – and most depressing… - quote of the year: cop to white girl found socializing with black men: “why do you sleep with niggers?”; girl's answer: “its 1967, asshole!”. 1967, right…