"Passing" by Rebecca Hall (2021)

 

Wow, what an excellent movie! 

My head is still reeling from last night when we watched this - after a sweet and slightly theatrical argument over my preferences towards old b&w classic movies - the subsequent compromise resulted in fairly recent 2021. movie directed by British actress Rebecca Hall in her directorial debut. She is one of those actresses with familiar faces but impossible to actually place - I have exactly the same problem with Keira Knightley, Natalie Portman and Anne Hathaway, I understand its not all the same person but to me they are totally undistinguishable, pretty young faces successful in their domains but even under the torture I could not tell you one from another. However, from now on I will remember Rebecca as the only director amongst them and believe me, she is a fine auteur. In fact, this was so brilliant that I don't see how is it possible to follow it. 

"Passing" is based on 1920s novel set in a so called Harlem Renaissance when a new generation of Afro-Americans flourished in the big cities and were looking forward to upward mobility, class and success. To my knowledge this is the first generation that - despite obvious racist society - brought successful writers, musicians, artists, philosophers, etc. Even so, "passing" was a widely spread social phenomenon where light skinned people would silently slip into Caucasian society for the sake of social climbing. It was controversial back than and its still controversial today, because as much as we love to claim that race is not an issue, unfortunately it still is - we still have a long way to go, just look at the treatment of all non-Europeans as they come to the West. Who is still doing manual, dirty work but ethnic minorities from all over the world. 

The movie has a claustrophobic, small cast with only several characters: two friends Irene and Clare, their husbands, servants, children. The ladies meet after a long time and are thrilled how each of them lives completely different lives - while Irene has a relatively comfortable, middle class life with charities and parties, Clare had married a wealthy white husband who is openly racist and had no idea she is black. From this start, the story unravels and I can't go into more details but it turns really hypnotic and mesmerising, with beautiful black & white photography, tinkling piano and dreamy atmosphere that occasionally turns ominous and scary. It's not only that Clare passed for white, almost everyone in this movie passes for something else - Irene passes for a happy wife, her white journalist friend (based on a real-life Carl Van Vechten whom I know because he patronisingly praised Bessie Smith and many other artists of the time) passes for a straight man, etc. Almost everybody here has a secret and their polite demeanour is just a mask. Its just mazing how director Rebecca Hall created something so brilliant without big budget, in fact it might be said that the brilliance is exactly because she had a limited budget so she was forced to be creative - for example, because she could not show a whole street full of people in 1920s costumes, the opening scene gives us a bits of dialogues and feet of people passing by, we immediately know and understand everything even though its just being hinted at. Somehow this all turned out beautiful to watch and very memorable, despite a limited budget. I have just read that even black & white cinematography was more choice out of necessity and it works wonderfully here. I think its one of the best movies I have seen recently.