LOS ANGELES (AP) â When Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins was considering adapting Colson Whiteheadâs Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the Underground Railroad into a limited series, he kept hearing the same thing: Impossible.
It would be emotionally and mentally draining, Jenkins knew. And he questioned the ethics of such a production: Do people really need to be reminded about the horrors of slavery?
Ultimately, Jenkins worked through the doubts. The result is âThe Underground Railroad,â an unflinching portrayal of Cora, an enslaved woman who escapes a Georgia plantation and its horrors only to be pursued by an unrelenting bounty hunter. Along the way she must confront the anger she feels for her mother, who left her at the plantation when she was 10.
May 13, 2021
LOS ANGELES (AP) When Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins was considering adapting Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the Underground Railroad into a limited series, he kept hearing the same thing: Impossible.
It would be emotionally and mentally draining, Jenkins knew. And he questioned the ethics of such a production: Do people really need to be reminded about the horrors of slavery?
Ultimately, Jenkins worked through the doubts. The result is “The Underground Railroad,” an unflinching portrayal of Cora, an enslaved woman who escapes a Georgia plantation and its horrors only to be pursued by an unrelenting bounty hunter. Along the way she must confront the anger she feels for her mother, who left her at the plantation when she was 10.
Aaron Pierre on Enduring the Trauma and the Triumph of ‘The Underground Railroad’ Kevin Fallon
There is something about the way Barry Jenkins, who wrote and directed the films
If Beale Street Could Talk, frames a close-up. It’s a lingering, somewhat romantic gaze invigorated with a slight change in zoom. The actor stares directly through the camera, as if breaking the fourth wall. It makes you feel like you instantly know them.
Whether it’s an extra who isn’t seen or heard from again or the protagonist whose journey we follow, Jenkins renders a sudden humanity in them. Especially in those dramas, which center around Black characters battling the demons hurled at them by an unjust society, there’s a poignance to that, one that is almost revolutionary: the marginalized whose stories are relegated to the background, whose humanity is rarely explored onscreen, instantly demanding your compassion, that you know their truths. That they aren’t only their