Dark Hours
“There are difficult images in this program, images that speak frankly about the injustices inflicted upon my ancestors during the construction of this country,” Barry Jenkins warns.
Violence appears from the very beginning, immediately gripping the viewer and leaving them struggling to breathe.
Sometimes suggested and sometimes shown directly, violence follows the heroine throughout her journey toward freedom. With anxiety in our stomachs and our breath held, we follow the young woman through each of her difficult stages, discovering over the course of the ten episodes some of the most terrifying pages in American history.
Like tightrope walkers, Barry Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton move between beauty and horror, hope and despair, kindness and cruelty, without allowing themselves to be “consumed by the barbarity of the truth.”
Perhaps this was the most powerful tribute the director could offer to his ancestors.
