Hear tt stern enzi talk more about fatherhood in film on this episode of Cincinnati Edition.
"If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole Earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons."— James Baldwin
How do we define what makes a good father? Mothers are always there; they always show up, especially when fathers don't. From a sociopolitical perspective, single parenthood is largely about mothers. There is a funny notion about fathers onscreen. They are bumbling and comedic. The general rule is fathers don’t know best.
Where does that leave Black fathers? Even further behind the stereotypical curve. We can't even embrace the one Black father (Bill Cosby) who was the best onscreen version we had, because he is persona non grata in cultural conversations now and forever, which is worse still for me, because I have a couple of great stories of meeting and spending time with him that I can't use for cocktail chit-chat.
What about Sidney Poitier? Black icon, but never as a father, although we did get to see him as a son, albeit briefly, in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The track records of Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Samuel L. Jackson don't exactly add up either. Denzel serves as a mentor occasionally (think Antwone Fisher or The Great Debaters) or a protector of children (Man on Fire), but outside Mo’ Better Blues, He Got Game and Fences, he is simply a singular force of nature. Will Smith serves as an intriguing exception to this rule. Not only two mainstream films (After Earth and The Pursuit of Happyness) where he steps up as a father, but he's literally acting opposite his own son (Jaden).
So, what did I expect to find during my first in-person trek to the Sundance Film Festival? I was determined to find a take or two on paterfamilias. Not just fathers, but parents that I could see as a reflection of the type of father I wanted to be. I assumed they would likely not be Black, because — well, you understand that we aren't represented like that in the fatherhood pantheon.
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The thing is though, the pantheon of fathers isn't inherently perfect. Greek mythology is rife with bad fathers. Male gods who cat around, abandon their offspring, and/or create epic trials for them to overcome. Sons kill their dear old dads and marry their mums (and serve as inspiration for a gaggle of psychological disorders). Sometimes though, the sons go on quests to reconnect and/or free their fathers from prisons or fates worse than death, only to fly too high and die themselves.
That's just real-life family drama though, right?
[Editor's note: Trailers currently aren't available for these films. Instead, we included video interviews of directors discussing the movie.]
Ghostlight
Directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson
Shakespeare seemingly provides the opening reflection point for the theater of life. All the world's a stage, and his work brought all facets of life to bear for all to see. When it comes to Black folks, largely our connection to Shakespeare begins and ends with Othello, which feels strange since more often than not, adaptations of Othello have historically featured white performers in blackface who receive credit from the critical thinkers of the day for capturing the essence of the Black experience far better than any Black performer ever could.
But what happens when and if we (and in this case, I mean Black people) free ourselves from the strict adherence of racial identity as the arbiter of authority and authenticity? This question bubbled up for me during my Sundance screening of Ghostlight.
A distraught construction worker (Keith Kupferer) explodes on the job one day and his outburst is seen by a community theater performer (Dolly De Leon) who convinces him to join the local production of Romeo and Juliet. At first, the invitation is nothing more than an opportunity to engage in therapeutic exercises to manage his anger, but soon he discovers the universal nature of Shakespeare's work. Eventually, he is even cast as a much older version of Romeo and must grapple with the power of young love and its potential to lead to suicide, if said love is not given the space to live and breathe freely.
The crux of the narrative is about facing and understanding where such desperation comes from and how his own tragic loss mirrors this situation. A father not connecting with his own children.
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I watched this play out and slipped into the old school code switching Black folks have been engaging in for decades. I sat back, thinking of my own children, longing to see a Black man, a Black father, caught up in this dilemma. It wouldn’t matter if his children were his by birth, marriage or adoption.
Romeo and Juliet could benefit from a more liberal reinterpretation. How about Romeo as a young Black man, in love with a young white woman from a family of means — families with a rich antagonistic history, say in the deep South caught up in the legacy of slavery and segregation? West Side Story offered a multicultural take that was considered far more palatable for mainstream audiences, but why not this?
Or better still, why not Ghostlight with a Black father, from an older generation, struggling to comprehend how and why his son and his young white lover would take their own lives? There is a compelling and quite tragic beauty in the arc of this father, a true Everyman at his core, that speaks to the plight of the Blackness of fatherhood. I wanted to claim it as my own.
In the Summers
Written and directed by Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio
When filmed narratives unfold with eerie parallels, it becomes time to wonder whether or not the multiverse does, indeed, exist. That's how I felt watching In the Summers, a glorious slice of life revealed over a series of summers in the lives of two sisters, Eva (Sasha Callen) and Violeta (Lio Mehiel) as they travel to New Mexico to stay with their father Vicente (Residente).
As the summers progress, we go from seeing much younger versions of the sisters — from hopeful and excited to teenage angst as the trips seem to be more of a chore to a dawning realization that their relationship with their father has evolved into a dynamic that isn't traditional or built for the people they are becoming.
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Fatherhood, in this film, reminded me of not only my own journey with my stepchildren, but also their relationship with their father. While not geographically separated, a gradually increasing chasm developed between my children and their father, which I feared from the moment I entered their lives. I never desired to take his place — which I knew would be impossible. My clearly stated role was to simply be another loving presence in their lives. What child wouldn't benefit from having someone else standing in their corner offering unconditional love?
In the Summers carefully sticks to one side of this dynamic; showcasing just the periods where Eva and/or Violeta are with Vicente, which allows us to see not only how they interact with him and his growing family and support system in New Mexico, but also with each other. The narrative is as much a love story between the sisters as it is a father/daughter tale.
I couldn't escape the parallels between this story and my own. While standing clearly on the other side of things, I enjoyed seeing how my kids matched up with and distinctly differed from Eva and Violeta. Watching Violeta find their identity as a young queer person, I marveled at how my oldest navigated their own journey. And Eva's eager love for Vicente stands in stark contrast to the connection I have with my Baby Baby.
Daughters
Directed by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae
The daddy-daughter dance might be one of the most special family celebrations ever. I remember participating with my youngest during her final year of elementary school at Sands Montessori. From going with her to choose her dress, to attending a pre-dance dinner with her best friends and their fathers, to the dance itself — which was truly special for us, since my daughter (instead of my wife) danced with me at our wedding — it is the reason why my daughter believes she must be my favorite child.
It is far too easy to latch onto the first two lines of the chorus from John Mayer's "Daughters" where he implores, "fathers be good to your daughters / daughters will love like you do," but there is so much truth in that lyric. My daughter, whether she knows it or not, has loved me, in key moments just like I've tried to love her.
Now imagine how such a dance might feel for daughters whose fathers are incarcerated. After years of not being present in their daughters' lives, a select group of fathers are given the chance to prepare for a daddy-daughter dance in the prison gymnasium. Patton and Rae offer heartbreaking and intimate scenes of these men as they wrestle with not just the consequences of their actions, but how they have impacted their kids. And on the flip side, we are given access to these girls, some of whom truly struggle with trust because, while they may not understand the legal realities, they completely get that their fathers are not present every day.
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The film dares us to look ahead into the futures of these girls and Mayer's lyrics from the bridge rise up again.
Oh, you see that skin? / it's the same she's been standing in / since the day she saw him walking away / now she's left cleaning up the mess he made
There is a fairy tale quality to the relationship between fathers and daughters. In the most traditional sense, fathers want to be the standard that their daughters use to judge every man that enters their lives, and we want to be better than any of these men until they find the one we (and they) feel they can trust with their hearts.
It is hard to imagine what that dynamic might feel like if, as a father, you aren't seen as the best example in the first place. Black fatherhood, even outside the bounds of incarceration, exists in a less-than state. The data creates a portrait of men who aren't there, who don't treat girls and women with respect, who will always let their families (and in particular, their daughters) down.
Daughters, as a film, goes to great lengths to remind us that there are fathers out there who have made mistakes, but are willing to be as present as possible and one day, we will see how their daughters might be able to model their own versions of their fathers' love.
Good One
Written and directed by India Donaldson
Coming of age narratives looks so different onscreen based on race. Good One, from Donaldson, makes for an intriguing companion piece to Daughters, as it examines how an imperfect white father fumbles being present in his daughter's life at a moment where she might need him the most.
This new pickup by Metrograph Pictures, after its breakout at Sundance, quietly studies Sam (Lily Collias) as she heads off for a weekend of backpacking in the Catskills with her father Chris (James Le Gros) and his friend Matt (Danny McCarthy). We're led to believe this is a routine trip that sometimes also includes Matt's teenage child as well, but this time, Sam is left alone with the guys as they bicker and banter like lifelong friends who see each other far too well (which means they also tend to have blind spots in their judgment about the other too).
What's most fascinating about Donaldson's narrative is that it doesn't hinge on one explosive twist or revelation. Instead, it's emotional center shifts based on a subtle exchange, which while quite clear and uncomfortable, isn't intended to result in a powerful confrontation.
Again, Mayer says it best.
On behalf of every man / looking out for every girl / you are the guide and the weight of her world
But as the situation and the film drifts to its conclusion, it spotlights just how different we weigh the actions of James (the father here) and those in Daughters. Somehow, James escapes the harsher judgment so easily heaped on the incarcerated Black men in the Patton and Rae documentary. Is it because these men are real and (by necessity) more immediate? I would argue that we miss opportunities to see Black fathers in these fictional narratives, where the consequences give audiences the chance to consider the unfolding drama without real life implications.
Exhibiting Forgiveness
Written and directed by Titus Kaphar
Now's the time to return, at last, to the James Baldwin quote from the beginning. That quote also opened Titus Kaphar's narrative feature debut. His director's statement, which was included in the film's press notes, informs readers that the film is "about fatherhood, family and hope rooted in lived experience. It follows one artist on his journey to healing in the face of generational trauma. My first attempt at telling this story was a documentary. In the end, I chose fictional narrative as a thin veil through which I felt I could be most vulnerable. Not every moment is pulled from life, but there is truth in every scene."
I had to let him speak for himself. Kaphar is an artist on the global stage, with work featured in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of the Arts, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tarrell (André Holland), the artist at the center of Exhibiting Forgiveness, finds himself at a personal and professional crossroad. Torn between enjoying a truly successful point in his career and the unexpected return of his estranged father (John Earl Jelks), an addict in recovery, Tarrell also struggles to remain present for his wife Aisha (Andra Day) and young son Jermaine (Daniel Michael Barriere).
Fused throughout both his film and his statement, Kaphar seemingly spoke to me, drawing me into an intimate conversation between two Black men, sharing our stories in a bluesy call and response, that was also a call to stare deeply into the reflection onscreen and own the truths revealed, even if they didn't look exactly like the facts of either of our lives.
In many ways, this is what I dreamed of doing through the novel I started about meeting my own father. In the fictional take I started back in my 20s, I dared to think I could create my father on the page with the goal of being in a position to kill him by the end of the tale. Through his absence in my early life, he was already dead; I was simply sealing the deal and exposing that desire to the world. It wouldn't be what really happened, but it would ring with brutal truth.
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I watched Tarrell, in his work and the nightmarish flashbacks that peppered the narrative, as he longed for his father's approval and recognized how in some small way, much of my own drive as a young man (and later as an artist) was wrapped up in the notion that some successful moment would be the key to luring my own father into my life for the first time. I would open the door with a report card full of A's and he would be there, ready to walk in and stay.
What did Baldwin say again, talking about how the planet would "blaze with the glory of fathers and sons" if only everything about a father and a son could be "reduced to biology"? If we could be there for each other, as we are in the blood and psyche of that relationship, no one could comprehend the power.
But what we end up with, in Kaphar's film, is the explosive sadness and longing in Holland's haunting performance. His eyes transfer Tarrell's psychological wounds onto the very skin of viewers. His stare cuts and cauterizes the wound, ensuring that we will survive until the next fresh cut.
It is worth returning, one final time to John Mayer and "Daughters," but of course this time, his choice words for the boys, the sons out there in the world.
Boys, you can break / you'll find out how much they can take / boys will be strong and boys soldier on / but boys would be gone without warmth from a woman's good, good heart.
As my Sundance festival of fathers came to a close, I couldn't escape the power of that driving absence, at least in my case. Without a father in my life, from the beginning, I leaned so much more from the women around me — my mother, grandmother, and extended family of aunties — who prepared me before the mirrors and screens all around and envision my own path as a father.
And I'm still here.
