A still from the series The Underground Railroad. (Image courtesy: theugrailroadtv)
Cast: Thuso Mbedu, Joel Edgerton, Chase Dillon and Aaron Pierre
Director: Barry Jenkins
Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Barry Jenkins' The Underground Railroad, a sweeping adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, swivels around two contrasting narrative constructs that run parallel to each other all through the show. One hinges on the horrors of slavery and unspeakable deeds committed by hearts overrun by hate; the other showcases the courage and resilience of enslaved Blacks in the American South prior to the Civil War.
The Underground Railroad, a ten-episode Amazon Studios limited series created and directed by Jenkins, transports the audience into the heart of one of American history's darkest corners with a keen eye for detail. It straddles the impressively granular at one end and the phenomenally grand at the other. Both make for harrowing yet captivating drama.
The Underground Railroad, an achievement of epic proportions marked by a distinctive directorial vision, a well-defined visual aesthetic and a richly evocative soundscape, isn't the sort of series that one can sit back on a couch and binge watch. It is anything but conventional entertainment meant for easy consumption.
It is an unflinching, traumatic recreation of a horrific time when the United States Declaration of Independence, which stressed the equality of all men and their "unalienable rights" to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness was trampled upon at will by delusional and pitiless White supremacists.
The cinematography James Laxton (Jenkins' collaborator on all three of Jenkins' feature films, Medicine for Melancholy, Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk), imparts a fluid rhythm to The Underground Railroad and breaks the greys and browns of a largely monochromatic palette with bursts of bright colours. The mood of the show is always sombre, but the spirit it honours is underlined by grit and tenacity. Laxton's compositions articulate the duality to perfection.
A young enslaved woman Cora (Thuso Mbedu), along with fellow slave Caesar (Aaron Pierre), escapes from a plantation in Georgia and heads for the clandestine underground railroad, which Whitehead's book imagined as a literal network of trains, stations, safe houses and conductors used by subjugated Black people seeking to break free from the shackles of slavery.
The two runaways are pursued by a vicious slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton) and his pre-teen sidekick Homer (Chase W. Dillon). Even without Ridgeway snapping at her heels, Cora is up against crushing odds - her mother Mabel (Sheila Atim) ran away when she was a child, leaving her emotionally scarred - and she suffers a series of personal losses as she wends her way towards freedom.
In a South Carolina town where serenity reigns on the surface, she stumbles upon a dark experiment aimed at "building a better Negro, mind, body and soul": Black men are slow poisoned, the women sterilized. In "the great White state" of North Carolina, "pure in every way as the Lord intended", it is infinitely worse. Here Blacks have no right to exist. Cora is hidden in a cramped attic by an abolitionist (Damon Herriman) who, despite his best intentions, does not realize that the helping hand that he has extended to the girl has only handed her another form of captivity.
She is starved of sunlight and fresh air. The experience presages the next gut-wrenching and heart-rending episode in which Cora shares the back of a carriage across a barren, burning Tennessee landscape in the forced company of another defiant runaway slave (Calvin Leon Smith), who resorts to an extreme form of resistance against his oppressors, one that leaves an imprint on the harried girl's mind.
All through her journey, Cora faces circumstances that threaten to break her spirit. Most of them are created by the unrelenting Ridgeway whose hatred for her stems from his core belief that slaves who escape deserve no mercy and from the fact that her mother was the only runaway ever who he could not recapture. But Cora never gives up - fighting and resolutely and nobly.
She isn't a conventional heroine. Neither is Ridgeway a standard villain. Cora's quest for freedom is characterized by struggles and setbacks that never allow her a chance to secure a clear view of what her future might hold. She sees flashes of hope only when reaches the relative safety of a Black community in Indiana.
Ridgeway, too, is a man who, despite being an embodiment of pure evil, is accorded a character arc that recognizes his deep-seated insecurities, self-doubts and prejudices. In fact, he is, capable of feeling pangs of guilt too in a way that is convincing. It is another matter that it does not allow him any logical contextual leeway to justify his hateful actions.
The Underground Railroad devotes an entire episode to the making of the dreaded Arnold Ridgeway and another to the actions of Cora's mother. The latter chapter provides a context - and an explanation - for Mabel's disappearance from the girl's tortured life. The past, marked by violence, sexual assault, constant running and the emotional cost of abrupt separations, weighs heavy on Cora. She isn't just a runaway slave but is also a fugitive from the law.
"When you are running lot of things get left behind," Cora says to Royal (William Jackson Harper), a former railroad conductor who helps her flee to Indiana. Royal's reply to her is equally telling: "You carry more of the past than anybody I ever seen." How true that is to this day for all African Americans! The community may have a come a long way since the days of The Underground Railroad, but the history of tyranny and trauma lingers. In fact, that is what The Underground Railroad does best: craft a spellbinding, disquietingly dark portrayal of a past whose ugly legacy lingers on in the present.
Jenkins ends each episode with a modern song playing over the credits, signifying the continuity of all that mars the African American story in the land of the free. The Underground Railroad sound design is endowed with an immersive quality derived from an evocative mix of mood-setting background music (Nicholas Britell) and a hypnotic mélange of animal calls (insects trilling, birds squawking, flies buzzing, horses whinnying), the rhythms of the human breath and the crack of whips, the bellowing of train horns, the ticking of clocks and the crackle of fire (all which add up to forge a strong, composite underwiring for the narrative).
This sprawling saga is bolstered by two key performances. Thuso Mbedu infuses her role with empathy and humanity, captures both terror and tenderness and conveys a range of emotions even when she does not speak. Joel Edgerton's is a powerful presence: he fleshes out a reprehensible man without resorting to any of the standard tropes of screen villainy. Chase W. Dillon is a consummate scene-stealer. Among the others who turn in memorable performances are Aaron Pierre as Caesar, Fred Hechinger (playing the young Arnold Ridgeway) and William Jackson Harper in the role of Royal.
Conceived and executed with phenomenal panache, The Underground Railroad is an unfettered homage to a community that fought back despite being in chains and yanked open a portal to a future yet to be fully realized. It emphatically raises the bar for web shows: we haven't seen anything seen quite like The Underground Railroad in a long, long time.