BFI London Film Festival 2020: Mangrove
In 1970, a 55-day trial began for the case of the Mangrove Nine, a group of Black British activists who were arrested and tried for ‘riot and affray’ at a peaceful protest in London’s Notting Hill. After his restaurant, the Mangrove, was consistently raided—and he and his peers continually harassed and abused—Trinidadian-born Frank Critchlow and several of his friends and colleagues arranged a protest against the unfair treatment their community was being targeted with. After many arrests, the trial of the Mangrove Nine began at London’s Old Bailey, becoming the first judicial acknowledgment of racial hatred within the Metropolitan Police.
The trial, and the events that preceded it, is the backdrop to one of the affecting films from Steve McQueen’s new anthology series, Small Axe. Often employing long, lingering takes, Mangrove follows its characters intently, making sure to tell their stories in the most fleshed-out and accurate way possible. Running at just over two hours, we are allowed the time to truly get to know these characters—from Shaun Parkes’ Critchlow, to Letitia Wright’s impassioned Altheia Jones-Lecointe, and Jack Lowden’s energetic lawyer Ian MacDonald. McQueen’s camera pushes between bodies in crowded scenes of the protest and focuses on anguished faces in courtrooms, police stations and in Frank’s restaurant itself, as menacing white officer Frank Pulley (Sam Spruell) sits in his car outside. But there are also myriad scenes of joy, as the regulars of Mangrove find solace in each other, connecting and creating a community through food, music and laughter. As Darcus Howe (Malachi Kirby), one of the protestors who decides to represent themselves in court, states: “Wherever a community is born, it creates institutions that it needs.”
About half of the film is dedicated to the historical, 55-day trial, with sprawling shots of the Old Bailey—usually reserved for the highest of criminal offences—and a steady stream of impenetrable legal jargon highlighting the complications and often cruelty of the British legal system. The judge instructs the jury not to “take into account the colour of anyone’s skin”, as if institutional racism isn’t the determining factor of the case itself. As the tension builds inside the courtroom and out, McQueen leads us towards the case’s conclusion through a well-paced narrative and the impressive strength of the ensemble cast, of which Letitia Wright is undoubtedly the stand-out. Altheia tells her friends and fellow protestors, “We mustn’t be victims, but protagonists of our own stories”, and the statement reflects the film as a whole; McQueen tells a little-known story about salient time in history that feels particularly prescient this year.
As the long-awaited trial results are read out by the lead juror, the camera hones in on Frank’s face, his eyes filling with tears as he hears the verdicts of ‘not guilty’ called out one by one. Rather than rejoicing like the friends around him, he sits in shock, seemingly happy that the distress is over but aware that the fight is far from it. Later, as everyone else celebrates inside the restaurant, Frank stands outside in quiet stoicism. Rather than wrapping up a story of racism and discrimination in a way that panders to a white liberal audience—a-la Green Book—McQueen doesn’t allow his viewers to sit with a comfortable resolution. Earlier in the film, Jack Lowden’s lawyer naively remarks that “maybe we’re about to wake up”; forty years later, in a year where police brutality has been at the forefront of public discourse on a global scale, we still have a long way to go.
