Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira
Director: Ryan Coogler
Rating: 5 Stars (Out of 5)
With a superhero movie out every other month, it's easy to forget how much of an event these films once were when they dwarfed us every dozen or so years. That Superman, the first Batman in 1990, the second Spider-Man in 2004, they struck us like meteor-sized shots of dopamine, filling us with exultation and wonder, reducing grown-ups to kids and making kids believe in grown-ups. I didn't think I'd ever feel that way for a superhero film again. This week I learnt I was wrong.
First comes colour. A potion purpler than Prince's blood, viscous and thick, poured into the mouth of a man streaked with warpaint, before he's buried under red, red sand. This is a world sewn from kente cloth, calling for the brightest shades and patching them together into a wondrous zigzag. All draped around miles and miles of melanin. Wakanda is the richest, most technologically forward country in the world, a fictional African country that hides its splendour under a pastoral hologram. It wants to stay pristine by not letting the world in, even if it means not shining for all to see.
Wakanda owes its riches to Vibranium - pronounced by its king, T'Challa, in a way that lets us hear both the 'vibe' and the 'brain' baked into the word - and it is considered Earth's most powerful metal. Captain America's shield is made of this. Yet within Wakanda, their application of technology is tremendously human: they sew Vibranium into their clothes, they hide space-age armour inside sexy necklaces, they create holographic communicators that encourage multiply-shared communication. Even their self-driving cars aren't self-driving but steered from far away. Most of their hypermodern technology is based on human contact.
The Black Panther comics, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, came out in the mid-1960s - coincidentally right alongside the birth of the radical Black Panther Party - and I always felt they owed a debt to Lee Falk's Phantom, and his fictional African nation of Bangalla. The crucial difference this time, though, was the fact that there was no white saviour in sight. Wakanda could take care of its own, and this is the truth that director Rian Coogler seized upon with Black Panther. It is the first massive-budget superhero film with a black leading man, certainly, but it may be an even greater feat that this is also the first Marvel film that doesn't make you long for a cameo from another Avenger. It stands alone.
As befits a film primarily about race, subculture and tradition, the question at the core of Black Panther is not an easy one: Should a powerful country live in self-contained idyll, or should it seek to share resources and help the world, at the cost of its own potent and secret privacy? At what point dare we wage wars on behalf of others, and does mere physical superiority offer us the right to do that? These are weightier questions than superhero movies grapple with, giving Black Panther a provocative sense of urgency. It is a film that knows its own strength.
It is a gorgeous film, with cinematographer Rachel Morrison doing justice to the intricately fashioned Wakanda, dizzyingly taking us into a world more vibrant than we've seen. This is a movie with frames busy and beautiful enough to deserve an IMAX viewing. Ruth E Carter's costumes are enchanting, a mix of tradition and aggressively forward fashion, where neck-coils meet strikingly colourful armour. Coogler wears his influences on his sleeve, and the film doffs its hat at many touchstones of African culture as depicted in American cinema, from Coming To America to The Lion King. Now, of course, Black Panther is right atop that list.
Whenever the king wrestles a challenger on a waterfall, the crowd is impassive till the king strikes. Then they start a beat and begin to chant his name to go with his blows: T'Challa - beat, beat, beat - T'Challa - beat, beat, beat - T'Challa. This rhythmic T'Cheer is heady and irresistible, like this timely film and its propulsive Kendrick Lamar soundtrack. Black Panther has both grace and the spirit of Grace Jones. This is not merely a great film but, vitally, a cool one. It is in every way - visually, spiritually, temperamentally, swaggeringly, stylistically, philosophically - cool. You'll believe a man can be fly.
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