By Mina Radovic.
A visionary gangland highlighting a connection to Black America and ancient Egypt.”
Writer-director Yelena Popovic’s new film Moses the Black is a visionary gangland epic that turns the tables on the redemption story and highlights a connection to Black America and ancient Egypt. Feared gang leader Malik (Omar Epps) gets out of federal prison and returns home to avenge the murder of his closest friend. The film establishes an intimate connection with the character and places viewers down on the streets, underneath a maze of winding walls, rugged bridges, overhead tracks, and trains, amplified by a rough naturalist soundscape and original songs by Wiz Khalifa.
Malik recovers strength and fellowship among his gang members including right-hand man Mike (Corey Hendrix) and 2wo-3ree (Khalifa). He finds warmth in the woman he loves and in the confidence of his grandmother who in a final encounter gives him a little icon to be with him when she is gone. After her death and as much as he wishes to avoid it, a painful change begins to take hold and Malik meets his “protector” – the fourth-century saint Moses the Black (Chukwudi Iwuji). The rest of the film gradually carves out a tapestry where the lives of the two characters parallel and intersect. As violence increases, the verse that rings in Malik’s head sets off a chain reaction on those around him – his compatriots begin to worry their leader is becoming soft – while drawing the protagonist closer to St Moses the Black’s life among the Desert Fathers of Egypt, Syria and Palestine.
All the while Malik is hunted by a rival gang led by Straw (Quavo), orchestrated by a figure in law enforcement. The film’s corrupt policeman Jerry (Cliff Chamberlain) is not merely an archetype (echoing Gary Oldman’s unhinged coke-sniffing DEA agent from Leon, 1994) but an entirely new breed of evil. Popovic inverts our perspective on race, society, and the battle for the human soul when Malik – upon leaving a hospital – is followed by two (also white) policemen who follow, curse and remind him that they have all his deeds written down. Given the subject of the film the scene bears a double meaning: on one level, the duo denote law enforcement who meticulously track and record crimes and, on another level, they connote two demons presenting a track record of sins to Malik’s soul in order to force it into submission and despondency. Such brief yet critical moments of the film reveal Popovic’s literary ancestors (Bulgakov as well as Dostoevsky whom the director cherishes) but also put the director in touch with something much closer to home: Serbian cinematic tradition. Not only did the Yugoslav Black Wave strike a perfect balance between sociopolitical critique and existential breadth and champion characters from the margins of society but Moses the Black may be linked to one specific late Black Wave film. Aleksandar Petrović’s The Master and Margaret (1972), adapted from Bulgakov, features two jester characters played by Velimir Bata Živojinović and Pavle Vujisić that figure as demons driving a soul to madness. While the demons appear in the guise of literal entertainers in Petrović’s film, Popovic’s shift to law enforcement signals a more poignant critique of power where traditional gatekeepers become symbols of injustice while the convicted criminal becomes an unwavering voice of conscience treading carefully through the valley of death.
Moses the Black invokes Melvin Van Peebles by pushing the boundaries of American film genres through film language. Popovic also reflects Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader’s stylistic probing of crime, society, and the anti-hero’s journey towards (self)sacrifice. In particular, Moses explores the infinite impact the deed of one person – a gang member no less – has for the salvation of many as well as that of one’s soul a la Taxi Driver. Where another more recent film Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (2015) had neither the sensibility nor feeling for the ancient world it aimed to adapt (Aristophanes) nor for the local city and community it claimed to portray (Chicago), Popovic offers a finely wrought, well-balanced and altogether gritty artistic achievement that connects the ancient and modern world, the Egyptian desert with Chicago streets, gangland violence and spiritual revelation. In an even bolder turn, Moses the Black provides an authentic internal perspective of people and community that defines the heart of a city and is yet targeted and labelled as marginal, second class, if not sub-human. As the film charges to its conclusion the viewer pieces together Malik’s fate and that of his loved ones in light of St Moses the Black, just as the director prophetically reminds us of what really awaits at “heaven’s gate.” This film is going to mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and it has never been a greater pleasure to be at the summit.
Moses the Black had its US nationwide release on 30 January.
Mina Radovic is a film historian, philologist, curator, FIAF-trained archivist; Lecturer and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in Film Studies at the University of Vienna. He holds a PhD and Postgraduate Certificate in Education from Goldsmiths, University of London, runs the non-profit organisation Liberating Cinema UK, and curates for world-leading museums including MoMA, Anthology Film Archives and Cineteca Bologna (Il Cinema Ritrovato).