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An anthology series of five stories looking at the lives of a group of friends and their families in London’s West Indian community from the late 1960s to the early 80s.
Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology has been incredible over the last 5 weeks, with each one telling a unique, fascinating and interesting story that gripped the world. So, if you are the one person that’s ever interested in my ranking for this film series, here’s my ranking and reviews for the each film.
Mangrove was the first part of the Small Axe anthology film series, directed by Steve McQueen and stars Shaun Parkes, Letitia Wright, Rochenda Sandall, Jack Lowden, Alex Jennings, Sam Spruell and Malachi Kirby in the first of the five films. When nine men and women are wrongly arrested and charged with incitement to riot, a highly publicised trial ensued.
If you are the big tree, we are the small axe. Sharpened to cut you down. Ready to cut you down.
Steve McQueen’s latest film anthology is an experience one should watch this year, as it tackles the sensitive yet extremely relevant topics of racism, police brutality, segregation, classism and discrimination, in Small Axe, a five-part film series telling the stories of West Indian immigrants in London during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Not only do these films show how unjust the system is to the minorities, it also make statements to demonstrate that, despite being oppressed for the entirety of their lives, they’re not going to stop until justice is served. The depiction of a person of color living in…
“Small Axe” was Steve McQueens experiment to make 5 films with thematic links covering a wide range of different topics but all encapsulating : supremacy, injustice and history.
McQueen doesn’t shy away once in this series. The themes of the series are brutal and very face value. There’s not much subtlety but in a good way. The film doesn’t hide its beliefs and messages, it instead intends to wash over you with it’s harsh but hopeful authenticity.
Although thematically all the films tread similar messages, they all alternatively bring their own morals as well.
Mangrove - social injustice within the judicial system.
Lover Rock - Social unrest and solidarity.
Red, White and Blue - Police brutality with the police system…
"My influences come from real life. I'm not interested in cinema for cinema's sake. I'm interested in life - what one does and how one interacts." - Steve McQueen
everything important to find is written in the texts for the individual films.
to make it short Steve McQueen and the BBC just didn't try anything formally but instead decided to go down a classic historical education path. Mangrove and Alex Wheatle are the two works that are mainly based on this premise, while Education makes a step forward towards a better character design but is split between the initial approach and a classic drama structure. Lovers Rock is a nice breather in between while Red, White and Blue feels like the central piece of the anthology, formulating the initial themes carefully within a narrative that doesn't lose its focus on the characters.
****************************************************** As I had allready written a lot about each film under this series, so doesn't wanna write anything separately in this review, just want to thnks Steve McQueen for giving us not one, not two, total 5 separate films in a single year where each n every film is looked like different axe-head with different sharpness under same handle of this SMALL AXE which's specially designed for African-American Black people who have been treated like Slaves in a extreme dominance of racist Whites. It's like a version of protest through cinema!!!
Small Axe is an extremely interesting project to me, as someone with very polarized views of film and television. Is it a television mini-series composed of five episodes, is it five distinct films collected together in an anthology, is it one seven-hour-long movie? I guess the anthology answer comes the closest, but what's so exciting about it for me is the way that it fits into all three categories. The first installment, Mangrove, is the closest to a stand-alone film, with the four following installments almost functioning as short-film addendums that expand upon the themes in it, but these subsequent films also build beyond the scope of Mangrove and retroactively reflect back on it.
"If you are the big tree, let me tell you that We are the small axe, sharp and ready Ready to cut you down (well sharp) To cut you down" ~ Bob Marley
Small Axe is an extraordinary and successful experiment from one of the best and boldest filmmakers of this generation. While Steve McQueen tells five different stories here, in a way he's just telling one. This is a universal story of racial remediation, of social justice, of the communal effect of music, of family, of love, of following your passions, of bettering yourself and your fellow man and so so much more. This is an artist who, because of the blending of film and television here in the…
I wrote about my top 20 of 2020 on my website — read the full list here! And I also wrote about the best non-2020 movies that I watched for the first time this year — that list is here.
Small Axe, as a complete project, topped my list of 2020 wide releases because it’s so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s a gorgeous encapsulation of the beauty and the struggles of West Indian life in London. Not every installment is perfect, but every piece establishes the importance of dedicated space for the strength of a community, and each chapter still maintains a certain amount of hope amid the constant conflict. Its breadth and nuanced specificity make it a moving tribute to a fascinating, endlessly multifaceted community.
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