When her friend is shot by a cop, black high schooler Starr has to find her voice so she can speak out for him.
Let's get the obvious out of the way; yes, the book is definitely better. The characters are more fleshed out, and the very frequent inner monologue is here limited to occasional narration. With that said, this is a very impressive adaptation. I recommend both of these. The cinematography uses some handheld but only lets it shake when that is called for such as when a situation is chaotic
A lot of ground is covered here; it goes into code switching and white fragility. There is a lot of nuance; it is not a film where white people are cartoonishly evil(the way some are in the Avatar movies, which did not freak out the racists, presumably because the protagonist is also caucasian), nor are the African Americans saints. It does live down to some stereotypes despite the novel being written by a young woman of color who otherwise did amazing work making it authentic.
Given how sad the central concept is, one could understand if this were merely non-stop bleak misery. It would also have been a lot less effective, and thankfully they didn't go in that direction. This essentially paints a picture of good people finding joy in life, except when that is made impossible by ignorant people. If anything, the various bigots that we meet in this come across as just not really being willing to try to understand the perspective of ethnic minorities, rather than suggesting that they are monsters who enjoy brutalizing them. 8/10.
Let's get the obvious out of the way; yes, the book is definitely better. The characters are more fleshed out, and the very frequent inner monologue is here limited to occasional narration. With that said, this is a very impressive adaptation. I recommend both of these. The cinematography uses some handheld but only lets it shake when that is called for such as when a situation is chaotic
A lot of ground is covered here; it goes into code switching and white fragility. There is a lot of nuance; it is not a film where white people are cartoonishly evil(the way some are in the Avatar movies, which did not freak out the racists, presumably because the protagonist is also caucasian), nor are the African Americans saints. It does live down to some stereotypes despite the novel being written by a young woman of color who otherwise did amazing work making it authentic.
Given how sad the central concept is, one could understand if this were merely non-stop bleak misery. It would also have been a lot less effective, and thankfully they didn't go in that direction. This essentially paints a picture of good people finding joy in life, except when that is made impossible by ignorant people. If anything, the various bigots that we meet in this come across as just not really being willing to try to understand the perspective of ethnic minorities, rather than suggesting that they are monsters who enjoy brutalizing them. 8/10.