SING SING 🤩

PREMISE

A man imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men in this story of the transformative power of art.

THE GOOD STUFF

COLMAN DOMINGO- For those of you not fully aware of the newly minted Oscar nominee, he is an actor of substantial power. Usually, we are used to seeing that power being presented through a vast array of quietly flamboyant characters, heroes, and protagonists alike. That very much includes his Oscar-nominated performance in RustIn this past year.

In this film, he is extremely subdued and raw. Domingo is playing a man who is kindly quietly and gently losing his mind over the idea of losing his upcoming court appeal. There’s a brief moment in the film where he is auditioning for a play using the “to be or not to be speech” from hamlet. It’s a moment very fitting for what the character is, and in that moment you see all of the fury that is barely being contained for the rest of the film in that moment. This is really brilliant stuff by Domingo and in my humble opinion eclipses everything he’s done before.

THE DIVINE EYE- This is the nickname of the man named Clarence Maclin, a one-time inmate at Sing Sing Penitentiary, and a member of the very program that this movie is based upon. In this film, he is the Yang to Coleman’s Ying, with an inability really to control his rage, and is quick to blow up at somebody. It is through his journey that we see the power that artistic expression can have when all other things in one’s life seem very hopeless. This is a very satisfying performance to watch, and I hope to see more of him in the future.

THE BAD STUFF

Typical problems of a24 movies (part 1)– As it is typically with A24 films…this is a movie with a whole lot of extremely interesting characters and not enough time to get to know them.

These are characters played by real-life ex-convicts who were in this real-life program at this real-life penitentiary. There’s a wonderful scene in the middle of this film where each of them gets to tell a small slice of their story. Each of them is heartbreaking in their own small way. These stories are interwoven with scenes of them joyously and diligently rehearsing their play. More of these individuals would have been nice to see but we simply do not have enough time to do so.

Typical problems of a24 movies (part 2)- As it normally is with A24 films…this is a very slow-paced movie.

Not exactly in that arthouse bulls*** type of way though. This is not a hard movie to follow at all. But it is slow. This is a movie that expects you to catch what’s being thrown at you rather than having a bunch of preamble. For that, it might lose some people. There are major things that happened in this movie that have great effect on the plot but aren’t ushered in with some kind of a musical queue. You really have to catch what’s going on. Audiences don’t want to work that hard these days.

THE UGLY STUFF

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I’m an artist living in Los Angeles. In being so, I always run across other artists to talk shop and to chat about why we’ve arrived in this city. In these conversations, I often hear people talk about how their particular preferred artistic medium is the thing in their lives that they love the most and that they’re willing to sacrifice anything for, only for them to move out of the city a year and a half later or so because of life happening in some unexpected way.

To some people, the art they do is truly all they have. They live what they feel are mundane existences and they prepare for a week straight to live like a king for 3 minutes on a stage or in a studio of some kind. You see it with amateur comedians in comedy clubs, you see it with musicians in outdoor independent venues, you see it with poetry readers in random locations stepping in front of a microphone. Etc, etc, etc. it doesn’t matter if they live in an obscure location, how old they are, or what financial status they have in the world they HAVE TO DO THIS S*** JUST TO FEEL LIKE A HUMAN BEING.

This movie is a low-key tribute to those people. It’s a movie that tells you that art maybe can’t save the world, but in some cases, it can save people under the most dire of circumstances and create connections that will last forever. As corny and as over-romanticized as that sounds…please understand (if you are not an artist) that that is true, and movies like this are a testament to that. 

SING SING is in theaters now