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Anthology Overview: Small Axe (2020)

Uprising There's An Uprising


Small Axe (Film Anthology) 

Dir: Steve McQueen


So if you are the big tree
We are the small axe
Ready to cut you down
To cut you down
              - Bob Marley

   Small axe is a masterpiece from Steve McQueen as all of the five films in the BBC original anthology tries (and wins almost perfectly) not only in expounding the issues faced by the Blacks but acts as a celebration of their eventual triumph over what was and is trying to pull them down. It tells five important stories drawn from the real life experiences of the West Indian community, who lived in Britain  between the 1960s and 80s.


   The first film, Mangrove, tells the story of the Mangrove restaurant and the case of the nine people who initiated a protest against the police, who unlawfully seized and created fearful ruckus inside the place, which otherwise served as a cheerful place of community gathering for the Blacks. The courtroom scenes calls up the scenes from The Trial of Chicago Seven, but are even better than it for the sheer energy on display at the trial. And it's great to see the abusively racist police pigs getting stripped naked in docks, as their lies were not enough to cover the truth that finds an intelligent manifestationinside the court from the part of  Mangrove 9.

   The second film, Lovers Rock is so good and cinematically terrific that it sings and dances to its own tune and creates a vibrant and self indulgent universe for the community where they are in full power of themselves. The occasional white bullies and even a bully within their community, are silenced by bouncer brothers who brings back the serenity, allowing the dance party to rave on until they've used every bit of the floorboard for their steps. Lovers Rock is indeed dedicated to all the lovers and rockers who are keeping the depressing world of control and power sane.

   The third film, Red, White and Blue where a young man named Leroy Logan joins the police to fight discrimination meted out towards his community by the force, is the tale of his eventual disillusionment for his decision of joining the force against the wishes of a father who despises the profession - owing to an earlier instance of unreasonable police attack that he had to face. John Boyega is brilliant as Leroy and the father/son conversation towards the end of the film ends with a warm note of compromise between the two, which is meant to stay with you for a while.

   The coming of age of Alex Wheatle, an award winning author, and his earlier days of being a rogue child, to his subsequent years of educating himself to fund his own voice to dissent and articulate properly, makes for the fourth film in the anthology. Alex sitting down on his bed and putting down his thoughts as a song on paper is one of the memorable moments in the film.

"Uprising there's an uprising

There ain't no work and we have no shilling

We can't take no more of this suffering

So we gwanna riot in Brixton"

- sings Alex in a parlour, making everyone in the place groove along with its beat.



   "You have to supplement what they teach by teaching yourself" says the Rasta that Alex meets in prison. This advice changes his life forever and this sentence holds the key for the final movie of the anthology: Education, which talks about the segregation policy in the schools of Britain, that doesn't want the Black kids to learn anything worthwhile. So that they can force them to be restricted and satisfied with menial labour, that doesn't ask for much thinking. The film begins with Kingsley staring in awe at the projection of Andromeda galaxy and the cosmos as a whole. But soon his dreams of a better learning atmosphere are quashed by a teacher and an institution that shamed him and treated him like an invalid (without actually providing him with what's needed to improve his reading fluency, making this as an excuse for sending him into a fake special school, that doesn't even try to instruct its students properly). The closing sequence calls back this image of the cosmos, coupled with the voiceover of Kingsley reading the story of Amina of Zaria with confidence, as the right kind of tuition from a neighbouring Black woman has given him with the impetus to read out loud and face the world.

   Small axe cuts deep and judiciously and it's hard not to fall for it.
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