After catching a screening
of the Detroit Free Press produced documentary 12th and Clairmount, it was time to take a look at
Academy Award winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s hotly anticipated Detroit, chronicling the world infamous
1967 riots which rocked the city to it’s core.
As a Michigan resident and filmgoer, citizens of the state will receive
the film’s theatrical release this Thursday, nine days before the rest of the
country will see the film in release. An
unusual move for the Michigan film scene, particularly after the state’s film
incentives have been eliminated entirely.
In a rare once-in-a-lifetime
event, Detroit saw it’s red carpet
gala world premiere at the prestigious Fox Theater where residents and
filmgoers like myself got an early peek with the cast and crew in
attendance. Somewhere around 5,000
patrons showed up for the screening which received a standing ovation after the
closing credits of what proved to be a long, hard and harrowing journey through
Hell in a city gone berserk with violence, looting and bloodshed. It goes without saying Bigelow is an expert
technical craftswoman who, like Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, approaches the chaos from a near God’s-eye perspective
before settling down on the infamous Algiers Motel Incident, boiling down the
film’s cast of characters into one room on a truly terrifying night.
Using largely handheld
cinematography and reuniting with Zero
Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker screenwriter
Mark Boal while aided by a terrific ensemble cast including John Boyega, Will
Poulter, Algee Smith, Jacob Latimore and many more, Detroit is a visceral assault on the senses which at once will
inspire righteous indignation towards the injustices depicted onscreen while
also serving as a springboard for topical dialogue regarding modern political
controversies presently playing out in our cultural climate. Like other dramas addressing racial tensions
and police brutality, the film is at once confrontational, draining and in the
end offering a faint glimmer of hope for positive change.
That said, Detroit as a film is a mostly successful
horror show of police brutality and civil unrest which unfortunately proved to
be nowhere near as affecting or emotionally satisfying as the homegrown 12th and Clairmount, a film I
will eagerly recommend over this Hollywood outsider’s take on the events that
nearly completely destroyed the city.
For one thing, the film was largely shot in Boston, Massachusetts with
one or two scenes shot in Detroit itself and residents as well as journalists
from the area rightfully complained about the filmmakers’ failing to contact
those who lived through the event themselves.
In other words, Bigelow and her team of Hollywood players made this
entirely on their own which can make for incisive cinema while also running the
risk of viewers quick to point out inaccuracies or fictionalization. It doesn’t help that an intertitle near the
end credits inform the viewer certain events surrounding the Algiers Motel were
fictionalized for dramatic effect.
Overall, Detroit is a good film which could have
been great and may have been a stronger work if it were simply and only about
the Algiers Motel incident which ultimately became the film’s focal point of discussion. What’s more, for all of Bigelow’s painstaking
efforts to recreate one of America’s ugliest moments, nothing will ever be as
astonishing and horrific as real footage of the rioting itself. Though the film does make an effort to
integrate much of the preexisting newsreel footage into the proceedings, it’s
merely a fraction of what 12th
and Clairmount offered viewers as well as residents. This weekend there will be two films
available about the 1967 Detroit riots and I think you know which one you
should seek out instead.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki