The Oscar Winner Barry Jenkins on a Renaissance in Black Film
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The 2016 film “Moonlight” isn’t a blockbuster like “Get Out” or “Black Panther”—but, in its own way, it’s just as monumental. The film is a subtle, intimate portrayal of Chiron, a character we see as a boy and then as a young man, struggling to understand his sexuality as he comes of age during the crack epidemic. “Moonlight” won Best Picture at the Oscars, and a host of other awards. And it made Barry Jenkins one of the most celebrated young directors out there. He went on to film an adaptation of James Baldwin’s book “If Beale Street Could Talk,” as well as the Amazon series “The Underground Railroad,” based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead. He spoke with me for this week’s episode of “The New Yorker Radio Hour” about the current moment in Black movies and television.
In interviews, you say that projects like “Moonlight” and “The Underground Railroad” start years and years before they ever come out on film. What was happening in the culture ten or so years ago so that projects like “Moonlight,” “Underground Railroad,” “Respect,” “King Richard,” “Black Panther, “Get Out” would all come to fruition in these past six years? What was happening in terms of culture, and maybe in terms of the business?
You know, it’s interesting. Ten years ago would have been 2012, so it would have been at the tail end of the first term of Barack Obama’s Presidency. And I remember I made my first film—[it] came out in the inaugural year of that Presidency, in 2008, and it was just really interesting to be a young Black person, a young Black creative, in a time in this country where, if you look to the highest office in the land, there was a Black person, and there was a lot of things happening in the film industry. I think Ava made her first film—or her second film; excuse me—around that time, and—
Ava DuVernay, with “Selma.”
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sorry, I forget that these people are my friends, but they’re icons to folks listening. Ava won the directing prize at Sundance and Ryan Coogler had “Fruitvale [Station].” There was just so much going on. Justin Simien had “Dear White People,” and there was just so much happening.
Are you saying that the Obama Presidency was like a kind of inspiration or permission that hadn’t been there before?
Oh, I wouldn’t say permission, absolutely not. I wouldn’t say that, but I do think it’s interesting. The President of the United States is a very visible person. To have to see this person every single day—’cause the news coverage was intense—it meant that, if you walked into any room, this wasn’t going to be the first time someone had to see someone like me walk into that room, and they weren’t going to be surprised or taken aback by the things that we had to say, by the things that we wanted, by the things that we wanted to do. And I think so much work had been done in the decade prior, I must say, by people like Tendo Nagenda, who’s an executive over at Netflix, rising up—all these different people—that, when the opportunity presented itself, there were just so many folks, it was undeniable, I would say.
So what you’re suggesting, in a way, is that it changed the atmosphere in the rooms that we don’t see, moviegoers don’t see. In other words, offices in downtown L.A., at agencies and studios.
I would say that, absolutely. “Changed the atmosphere” is a wonderful way to say it. And I think also, too, the energy with which people entered those rooms was just different. Now, I wasn’t around in the nineties. I wasn’t around in the eighties. I can imagine what it was like for Spike [Lee] to always be the first, the only person stepping into those rooms, and not adjusting, not amending who he was, when he was in those rooms. And yet he made such great work, despite the atmosphere, as you put it, and against certain odds. And maybe, going back to talking about Mr. Obama, perhaps, yes, just seeing, constantly seeing, this image, maybe it reaffirmed the need to be committed to being ourselves in that adjusted atmosphere.
I think if you were to ask a Black American writer about what canon he or she learned from, they would—it would differ radically from writer to writer—but they would be looking to, just as anybody from any identity would, Black writing, whether it’s Wright or Baldwin or Zora Neale Hurston, or on and on and on. But also available to him or her is Melville and Jane Austen or whatever it is. As a filmmaker, what’s the canon for you, particularly when it comes to Black American film, as constricted as it was by circumstance?
One, I think for any Black person who grew up the way I did, the original canon are your elders—you know, sitting at the kitchen table with my grandma and her drinking the Sanka coffee on Sundays, making us sit there and telling stories about her childhood. She grew up in South Carolina. That’s one canon. And then, when I think of cinema—you know, David, it’s interesting—I didn’t realize this until I was an adult and I was studying cinema, but a lot of the Black cinema camp that I love, I didn’t realize it was directed by white directors. You know, I’m talking about—’cause, as a kid you’re watching “Coming to America,” you’re watching “The Color Purple.” These are things that my grandma watched, and these are movies that are directed by white people. That was sort of the canon growing up, and then, once I started to interrogate for myself what’s behind those images, what’s inside these images, it was Spike then. I can’t lie—it was Spike, as far as the Black canon of cinema images, and then Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” was the one, when I first saw that, it was, like, O.K., cool, this is a lightning rod. I understand where I need to go now.
I want to ask you a particular aesthetic question. Throughout your work, you prioritize lighting—something that not everybody thinks about. What’s the role of light in your films, and what’s the process you go through with your collaborator and cinematographer James Laxton and your colorist Alex Bickel to light actors and scenes in a way that’s become so iconic in your work?
Part of it is, I’m working from memory. I think one of the things that’s really beautiful about cinema and about filmmaking is you’re kind of using all these earthbound tools to capture the feeling of consciousness and to capture this wave of memories, and the way I remember Black folks’ skin, the way I remember Black folks standing in certain kinds of light, that’s what Bickel and myself and James Laxton, that’s what we strive for, always. This is a very privileged art form, by which I mean it’s very damn expensive, and it always has been. It’s less expensive now, and I think these tools, in addition to, one—it’s almost like jazz, David. It’s like jazz. I tell this story of being in Argentina, since you mentioned Mr. Obama’s first election. I literally flew to Argentina the morning after he won that race, and I get there to screen my first film, and I ended up in this group of Argentine intellectuals, and they’re talking about “What has America ever given to the world?” Because everybody’s trying to knock me back down, because I’m so proud that we have a Black President, and they were, like, “Nothing’s actually created in America.” And then they said, “Oh, but there is jazz. America created jazz.” And I was, like, “Yeah, we did,” and then, to me, because, again, this was, this was a bunch of white Argentineans that said, “You know, your people did that, and they explained to me that these instruments existed; they were used to play classical standards and things like that. But as the instruments made their way into the hands of Black folks, the sound that came out of them stretched and mutated. I think, with these digital tools of cinema, I think something very similar is happening in the field that we work in. And, again, forty years ago, someone from my background, it would be a much longer journey to get to the point where I could take control of these tools. You mentioned my colorist Alex Bickel and the cinematographer James Laxton. We use these German cameras, and when it comes to you, it’s just a brain, and you program how it reads light. You program what color tones it prioritizes. You program how it’s going to reflect the curve, the highlights, and the shadows, and things like that, and so, when we approach these images that are telling the stories of my ancestors and the people I grew up with, we program it to see them, to prioritize how they look in the light.
Barry, another thing that seems very important to you, in addition to light, is, naturally enough, sound. A film teacher once told you that images are only fifty per cent of the experience of watching a film, and the score is the other fifty per cent, which seems like a lot. You and your composer, Nicholas Britell, obviously take that greatly to heart. Can you tell me about the scores for “Moonlight” and “The Underground Railroad”? What sort of worlds did you want to build into those projects in terms of sound?
Yeah, I’ll start by saying—just paying respect to Richard Portman, who was the film professor you’re referring to. He was the first person I ever met who won an Oscar, and he won his Oscar—he worked with [Robert] Altman in the seventies, and they created this process of multitracking all these dialogue tracks. And he was the one who said that. He was, like, “Barry, you guys come in here all day and you focus on the image ninety-nine per cent, and then you just bullshit the last one per cent, of sound.” He said films are half image and half sound, so shout-out to him.
And did he get the percentages right? Really?
You know what, sometimes, depending on the scene, you know, it can be ninety-nine. There’s a scene in my first film where the screen goes nearly completely black. You just see a silhouette and you hear the voice of this narrative spoken. So it depends, but, I say—Mr. Portman passed away right before “Moonlight” was nominated at the Academy Awards. But it was beautiful. He was in the honorarium at the ceremony, and we ended up winning Best Picture, so shout-out to Richard Portman. It’s so important. When you’re in a cinema, the screen is in front of you, but the speakers are everywhere—everywhere. Sound, just like when you’re eating food or you’re drinking wine, the taste is important, but the smell is just as important. I think, in cinema, the sound is just as important. It’s that sniff of wine before you taste it. That’s what the speakers are to me. And, especially with “Moonlight” in particular, that character doesn’t express himself verbally quite a bit, but the audience is hearing everything he hears, and so both myself and Nick and then our sound folks, Onnalee Blank and Mat Waters, we always just go into it: “How can we help the audience understand what this person is feeling right now?” Basically at all moments.
For myself in particular, as a Black storyteller, I’m always just trying to get closer to myself, close to the truth of who I am and the creation of these images, which can sometimes be very difficult, and so I look to the work of others. Every time I get a chance to, I want to speak someone else’s name, who was working in a way that inspires me, who was telling Black stories that either I am not telling or I can’t tell. Because I think, collectively, as we all tell our individual stories, we’re just building out this tapestry of hopefully getting at the ineffable process of understanding or expressing what it is to be Black in the world today.
Barry Jenkins, thank you so much. I really appreciate your taking the time.
Thank you. It’s my pleasure.
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