Rolling Stone Menu The Rolling Stone Interview: Barry Jenkins
The Oscar-winning director on his adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘The Underground Railroad,’ the beauty of black bodies, his unique path to Hollywood, and much more
By
Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2016 novel
The Underground Railroad depicts both the savage reality of American slavery and the danger of escaping it. Much like
Gulliver’s Travels, the story takes its fugitive protagonist, Cora, on a fantastical tour through different states via a literal locomotive. Each stop along the way features horrors reminiscent of real-life atrocities. South Carolina is host to a Tuskegee-like experiment on supposedly free Negroes. North Carolina resembles both Nazi Germany and the early Oregon Territory, outlawing the existence of black people altogether. It is a world that requires a deft hand to commit to film, and perhaps no one is better suited than Barry Jenkins. Having bro
Review: The Underground Railroad searches for beauty amidst horror
Review: The Underground Railroad searches for beauty amidst horror
Barry Jenkins s adaptation of Colson Whitehead s novel is cognizant of how Black suffering is turned into spectacle By Radheyan Simonpillai
William Jackson Harper and Thusu Mbedu share a quiet moment in The Underground Railroad.
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (Barry Jenkins). All 10 episodes available to stream Friday (May 14) on Amazon Prime Video Canada. Rating:
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As breathtakingly beautiful as it is, The Underground Railroad can also be a traumatizing watch. The 10-part limited series is directed by Barry Jenkins. He brings the romantic aesthetic and focus on Black love we see in his films like Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk to this adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
For Thuso Mbedu, the road that led to T
he Underground Railroad was marked by trauma. But like the series itself, her journey affirms the hardy human spirit (as seen in her tattoo that reads: Faith, Hope, Love).
Candice Frederick
There s a moment in
The Underground Railroad that is so visceral it may linger in your mind long after you see it.
Cora (Thuso Mbedu), a formerly enslaved runaway, walks slowly toward her estranged mother (Sheila Atim) and slashes her throat with a surgical blade.
This vivid, stunning dream sequence one of many in Barry Jenkins s sprawling adaptation of Colson Whitehead s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel illuminates Cora s inner turmoil. Her mother, Mabel, fled the Georgia plantation where they were both enslaved, leaving 11-year-old Cora to suffer alone as a Black child in pre-Civil War America.
As the nights get longer and colder, so the need increases for something entertaining to fill them. Naturally, free-to-air television’s solution is more reality competitions. TVNZ has dusted off
The Apprentice for a new generation (TVNZ1, May 10), while a day earlier, Three introduces a Kiwi version of international hot property
The Masked Singer. A new quiz show, 9 Lives, hosted by Matai Smith is also expected to debut this month. Meanwhile, for fans of the outdoors, TVNZ1 has a new series of Britain’s
Your Garden Made Perfect (May 13) and a show focused on New Zealand’s aim to be predator-free by 2050 –