Finally saw Nia DaCosta’s update on the CANDYMAN film. <\/p>\n
Nothing but good things to say. <\/p>\n
Part of what the original Candyman doesn’t make clear is that that we’re dealing with an antihero, not a villain – a product of a racial violence so intense it lives beyond the grave. It’s very muc there, but not in the way a casual viewer of the period would recognize it without geeking out a bit on the film. The original film undercuts the whole racial injustice narrative by putting a white girl in peril, and centering her story. I think it very much *TRIED* to tell the right story, but in a very… late 80s way.<\/p>\n
This one doesn’t make that error. It picks up 30 years later and tells the old legends of the Candyman, including referencing the first film – but it does it by relying on the stories and perspectives of residents of the now-gentrified Cabrini-Green. blocks – and a few of the surviving residents of the late 1980s era who live in the old CG rowhouses, which were not torn down in the early 2000s. <\/p>\n
What we get is a story of an urban legend – always the same broad details, but different in the particulars of each telling – or iteration of Candyman lineage – from Daniel Robataille (Tony Todd, the OG Candyman) and on through the present. And it discusses the creation of these Candyman incarnations largely through telling the story of Cabrini-Green’s 70 year story of poverty and the violence it spawned – in particular, stories of police brutality, but also the culture of Cabrini-Green prior to it’s recentish gentrification. <\/p>\n
Exceedingly well done, and it’s a retelling that I genuinely think was needed, and that finally brings the right aspects of the story into the frame, and keeps them there.
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Finally saw Nia DaCosta’s update on the CANDYMAN film. Nothing but good things to say. Part of what the original Candyman doesn’t make clear is that that we’re dealing with an antihero, not a villain – a product of a … Continue reading