One of 2020’s few joys has been Steve McQueen’s Amazon anthology “Small Axe,” a series telling, in some instances for the first time, the stories of the Black Brits who faced oppression during the ’60s and ’70s. While “Mangrove” touted empowerment through self-representation, “Lovers Rock” through music, and “Red, White and Blue” through reform from within, “Alex Wheatle” calls for literature as a gateway to freedom. The film also features, among an uneven story and striking visuals, a skilled debut from Sheyi Cole, whose most powerful acting happens during the film’s quietest moments, as the title character.
“Alex Wheatle” braids his incarceration from the 1981 Brixton riot with his chaotic upbringing to explain his transition from cultural outsider to author. An orphan, haunted by feelings of abandonment, Alex lives at the Shirley Oaks children’s home under the guise of abusive white adults. He is often slapped across the face by a white woman he calls Auntie. Later, he lands in a fight with a white student, after the kid insults reggae as “coon.. wop crap.” The older white teachers, as punishment, throw Alex into a straight-jacket, and leave his limp body on the gym floor.
Once again, as with the other “Small Axe” films, McQueen and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner combine to make the year’s most indelible photography. A ground-level shot sees Alex lying on the floor in his straight jacket as a streak of sunlight cuts across the ground. The camera deliberately tracks to his expressionless face, as though to check on his state, only to see his eyes lost in a paralyzed void. Alex is so motionless, when the empathetic lens comes into a close-up of his shadow-bathed face, time sort of stands still. As though we’re searching for a way to comfort the prone neglected Alex. But we can’t. He’s alone in this hell. And so the camera slowly slinks away from the shadows back into the light. It’s a stirring explanation of isolation by McQueen and Kirchner, an impenetrable scene from Cole, and the closest they arrive at understanding the torture Alex feels from being violently ripped from his culture.
Running at a tight 65 minutes, you might wish the film stays with Alex in that boys home for longer to foreground just how much this prejudiced white institution ripped out any hint of his West Indian roots. Instead, Alex transfers from the isolated Shirley Oaks to the thriving West Indian district of Brixton. Dressed in prep school clothes and sporting a posh accent, he juts out in a bad way. His neighbor, Dennis (Jonathan Jules), takes the young interloper under his wing and introduces him to the food, clothing, music, and language he’s been missing. Take Alex’s posh accent, which might as well be a different language compared to Dennis’ colloquial slang. Or Alex’s impression of the police. Everyone in the neighborhood calls them the beasts. But the upstart Alex believes they’re there to serve and protect. In every conceivable way, he’s a stranger among his own people.
McQueen ironically loses Alex when the character rediscovers his roots. Alex changes to rocking blow-out hair and leather jackets, and then forms the music group Crucial Rocker sound system. While Alex uses music to develop his political observations about the oppressive law enforcement that throttles Brixton, the view into his passion for songwriting is short-lived. An oddity for an anthology so enraptured by the power of music. Between those events and his incarceration, there are beats missing. It’s the jail scenes, where his cellmate, the sage Simeon (Robbie Gee) works to learn Alex’s story, which falls into the generic, and adds little more than a frame to explore Alex’s past. By the time Simeon instructs Alex to educate himself about his culture through reading, we wonder how we landed at this spot.
“Alex Wheatle” combines the relevant themes that guide the prior “Small Axe” installments: music as an escape from one’s environment, police brutality, and a character adrift from his community — yet the writing struggles to connect the major plot points for big picture interpretations of Alex’s cultural self-education. The problem might lie in the film’s writing process. To the Observer, McQueen explains, “In [the ‘Small Axe’ writers’ room] also was a man called Alex Wheatle, who became an amazing person to go to for information about that time… We ended up making a film about his life because it was so fascinating.” Though McQueen and Alistair Siddons claim co-writing credit, one wonders if their proximity to the novelist Wheatle stunted their translation of his life, causing the film to feel overstuffed, rushed, and not fully considered.
“Alex Wheatle” is certainly the weakest of the first four “Small Axe” films. The story isn’t as strong. The character isn’t as indelible. And there are great costumes and wigs, large recreations of the neighborhood and shops from the period, but there isn’t an anchor to explain to non-British audiences what events led to the 1981 Brixton riot. The cataclysmic occurrence is divorced from Alex until it literally ends up in his lap. That decision works against the story. For dramatic purposes, viewers need not only to witness Alex’s growth, but the tensions that are growing between Brixton and the law enforcement surrounding it. Maybe McQueen believes that in the context of “Mangrove” and “Red, White and Blue,” audiences can connect the dots, but those films do stand alone without the aid of their surroundings.
It’s why “Alex Wheatle” is a fine filler film — the episode that nurtures the anthology’s major themes to the conclusion of the wonderful coming of age finale: “Education” — but it falls short of the lofty standards set by the other breathtaking stories in the “Small Axe” series, and even shorter of tapping into the feeling of abandonment that tugs at its subject. [C+]
“Alex Wheatle” arrives on Amazon Prime Video on December 11.