To Walk Or Watch: Our Critic Sticks With ‘Emancipation’
deadline.comIt was fascinating to see my good colleague Valerie Complex describe, in her review of the Antoine Fuqua/Will Smith slavery drama Emancipation, having almost walked out of the film, not because it was unworthy, but because she found the depiction of Black suffering and death almost too much to watch.
In the end, Complex stuck with it. But her review ended with perhaps the most moving plea I’ve ever seen from a critic. “There has to be another way to tell these stories,” she wrote. “There has to be another way.” Wow.
Sometimes, if you take movies seriously enough, you actually have to look away. Even the good ones—especially the good ones, perhaps—can be too intense, or too direct, or too emotionally unsettling for a thoughtful viewer.
So, very occasionally, you have to walk out. Many, I know, regard this as a crime against cinema. Every movie, after all, is somebody’s baby.
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