Brutal and operatic The Underground Railroad is a wake-up call
TV series
The Underground Railroad
Prime Video
Thuso Mbedu carries the series as Cora.
“There is nothing here but suffering,†says Cora, a girl born into slavery but desperate to escape it. In The Underground Railroad, a stunning 10-episode series from Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins, based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the suffering is tangible and omnipresent.
Thuso Mbedu (pictured below) carries the series as Cora, whose mother flees a Georgia cotton plantation without her. The white slave owners reduce the black population to non-human entities, but they’re the ones who are dehumanised. They’re grotesque, inciting fear and dealing out horrifying cruelties, such as eating a lavish meal and dancing while nearby a slave is brutally whipped for entertainment.
After Cora escapes, she discovers a subterranean train line set up by abolitionists to ferry slaves to freedom. But, of course, it’s not that simple. She has a slave-catcher on her trail â€" played with chilling intensity by Joel Edgerton â€" and is also trying to outrun her past. Race and racism follow her wherever she goes. In South Carolina, Cora finds refuge in a community that seems benevolent, but turns out to have nefarious motives. In a black-run winery in Indiana, tensions arise between the two leaders, one a former slave, the other born free.
This isn’t a show to binge. It’s epic and operatic, and many scenes are confronting and emotionally overwhelming. So they should be. For those who criticise Black Lives Matter protests or calls for Confederate statues to be removed from public spaces with excuses that it’s in the past and we should all just get over it, The Underground Railroad is a wake-up call. It uses arresting widescreen visuals, a haunting soundtrack and elements of magic realism to deliver a brutal truth. And the truth both sings and stings.
To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.
The best of Good Weekend delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sign up here.
Barry Divola is a journalist and author who specialises in music, popular culture, the arts, podcasts and travel.
0 Response to "Brutal and operatic The Underground Railroad is a wake-up call"
Post a Comment