When one turns on the news or opens a newspaper, it can feel as if America is at a crossroads at the moment. Issues surrounding race, gender, nationalism, and politics in general are hot button issues at the forefront. Luce attempts to tackle most of these issues in a single film.
Based on a play by J.C. Lee, Luce follows Luce Edgar (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a former child soldier adopted at the age of ten from war-torn Eritrea by Amy and Peter Edgar (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth). Luce has grown into a star scholar and track and field athlete admired in the Virginia suburb of Arlington. During his senior year, Luce’s black teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer), who believes him to be a symbol of black excellence, becomes concerned about the impression Luce may be leaving after assigning his class an essay to be written in the voice of a historical figure with Luce choosing Martinique revolutionary Frantz Fanon, and making an argument about the utility of violence to free oneself from the grip of colonizers. The dispute launches a prolonged confrontation between teacher and student that soon engulfs everyone within their orbit.
Luce offers one of film’s first forays into a topic that has increasingly garnered more examination in the age of Black Lives Matter and increased activism surrounding racial injustice: the generational divide between the civil rights generation of blacks who believe in respectability politics, the thought that conforming to the culture of the dominant class is necessary to overcome prejudice and discrimination, versus the younger generation that has eschewed having to keep up appearances for white people and separating blacks between those that are acceptably proper and those that are not. The film depicts and dissects this divide masterfully through the featured conflict between Luce and Ms. Wilson. Their dispute and ensuing confrontation is framed by the very subject that Luce passively aggressively warns Ms. Wilson about through his essay; the appropriateness of using violence to confront one’s colonizers, with the colonizer in this case being what Luce views as Ms. Wilson’s colonized mindset of black assimilation and respectability.
Ms. Wilson’s issues with misplaced pressure put upon her black students is what launches her beef with Luce, first in an off-screen incident where she crushes the future of his track teammate DeShaun (Astro) after searching his locker and finding marijuana. Ms. Wilson’s harsh punishment for DeShaun, subsequent admonishment of him in front of the other black students, and juxtaposition of him as the type of black person to avoid being versus Luce’s position as the ideal. Publicly singling out Luce as the moral opposite and standard to aspire to not only spoke to Ms. Wilson’s embrace of a dehumanizing assimilation standard that pits blacks against each other, it reinforced the internal struggle Luce had been faced with since his adoption into the Edgar family. The pressure that many accomplished black people or young black people with potential feel to be a “credit to their race” can be a crushing one not just for their ability to enjoy their lives and just breathe, but for their own senses of self. Luce’s struggle with identity is made clear throughout, but no time more powerfully than during his practice for a big school speech where he recounts through tears the moment his adoptive parents made the decision to change his name. Try as she might, Amy could not pronounce his given Eritrean name, so Peter suggested changing it to Luce. The switch to a more westernized name is about more than just a new identifier, it symbolized the beginning of his duality; the question of who he would become. In a credit to the film’s brilliance, Luce does not let the titular character off the hook when it comes to his outlook on race. While much is made of the pressure he faces to be an exemplary young black man and his decision to address the mistreatment of DeShaun, it is noted, by Ms. Wilson no less during a powerful confrontation between she and Luce in the film’s third act, that the way he goes about dispensing justice and who he chose to use as an accomplice speaks to prejudices of his own that he may harbor toward blacks of a certain class. As with the real life issue, Luce provides no easy answers and enough culpability to go around.
Luce not only examines how American racial expectations and standards affect black Americans however, but also how this phenomenon affects the viewpoints of white Americans, through its portrayal of the relationship between Luce’s parents Ann and Peter. The couple has multiple conversations about the time invested in healing Luce and how Ann views any realizations made about what his character could potentially truly be as a wasted effort and essentially giving up on him in a world already set up for him to fail and anticipating that very thing. Peter on the other hand finds the constant benefit of the doubt extending toward Luce by Ann as a sort of virtue signaling, pie-in-the-sky liberalism more about saving face and putting on airs. The debate between the two calls to mind the constant debate in predominately white spaces regarding race in America and social justice. On the one hand, liberalism ostensibly fights for greater access and less discriminatory action toward black people, but the opposing side of conservatism, and even a lot of black people themselves, view these efforts as condescending, insincere, and partially self-serving on behalf of the supposed allies working to help black advancement. Luce does a good job in portraying Amy and Peter’s relationship in such a way that the multifaceted aspect of this debate is displayed in a balanced way, hitting on every angle and allowing viewers to decide what Amy and Peter represent, and therefore how this debate plays out in real life.
The ensemble cast of the film all do a fantastic job of portraying the complex characters and giving respect to the layered complicated subject matter. But no two actors perform more spectacularly than Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Octavia Spencer. Harrison is mesmerizing as the calculating and sociopathic Luce, at once displaying the cold, conniving attributes that make sociopaths so dangerous and capable of bending others to their whims while also communicating the pain and confusion at American racial standards to such a degree that audiences understand why he makes the choices that he makes. Harrison transforms from cold and monotone to smiling and laughing effortlessly, driving home Luce’s dangerous personality. He is matched perfectly by the always fantastic Octavia Spencer in her role as the stern, paranoid teacher with an axe to grind and chip on her shoulder. She too gives a multifaceted performance through her caring and torn portrayal of a sister struggling to help her mentally ill sister Rosemary (Marsha Stephanie Blake). Naomi Watts and Tim Roth also offer great performances as an adoptive couple juggling love for their son with morality and the pressures of being interracial parents. Luce is a movie with not a lot of easy answers and the portrayal of the couple reflects that. Their chemistry together helps add believability to the film and elevates it as a whole.
Luce is a film that seeks to put a microscope to America by covering as many of its hot button issues as possible. Race, generational differences, sexism, mental health, and parenting are all covered in a movie that clocks in under two hours. Usually stuffing this much into such a short time frame is a death knell for a film, but director Julius Onah is able to provide enough attention to each topic and interweave them within the story to keep it feeling less overstuffed and more like a slice of modern American life. It’s examine of the the complexities of black American life and the generational differences in how those complexities are addressed and tackled is brilliantly done as film’s first foray into a burgeoning issue. The film’s revenge tale and portrayal of a young man with a hint of personality issues just bubbling underneath the surface both called to mind past great films like We Need to Talk about Kevin and Oldboy. Kelvin Harrison Jr. boldly announces his arrival on the scene with an exemplary performance that is one of the year’s best and awards-worthy. Octavia Spencer, Naomi Watts, and Tim Roth are also on their game as the top flight actors that we know them to be. Luce is one of 2019’s best films and a worthwhile watch for both greater social understanding and an entertaining, thrilling watch.
Image: Neon
