Review: ‘The Hate U Give‘ — The Most Important Movie of 2018
It’s not just for teens and “urban” audiences. It’s for America right now.
While certain TV shows can advertise that the storyline of an episode is “ripped from the headlines”, feature films can rarely claim the same. With so much more money at stake, making a movie is, by nature, a slower, more deliberate process, where screenplays can be in development for years, edits and reshoots can drag on for months, and new developments (like current events or bad press about the production or cast) can get opening dates pushed back, or scuttled completely.
The Black Lives Matter hashtag and movement first appeared in 2013 after wannabe vigilante George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. Now in 2018 we have the first movie that directly evokes the name, spirit, and values of Black Lives Matter, The Hate U Give, which is based on the best-selling novel by first-time author Angie Thomas. It tells the sweeping, gripping tale of Starr Carter, a 16-year-old black girl who grapples with her own racial awakening after a childhood friend is gunned down by a white police officer. And The Hate U Give is, in my mind, the best, most important movie of 2018 so far. Watch the trailer for The Hate U Give below.
Starr, played by a transcendent Amandla Stenberg, lives in the black, mostly poor neighborhood of Garden Heights while commuting to a wealthy, predominantly white private high school called Williamson Prep. In order to manage the cultural differences and expectations of these two environments, Starr, like many non-white people in America, has developed two distinct personalities, which she calls Starr versions 1 and 2. To avoid conflict and judgment, Starr is careful to not seem too black to her white classmates, nor too white for her black friends and family in Garden Heights. But when her childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith) is shot to death just inches from her by an overreacting white police officer, with Starr as the only witness, the two versions of Starr are thrown into conflict as Khalil’s story becomes national news and part of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests against the killing of unarmed black people by police officers.
As she attempts to process what she has witnessed and the trauma she has endured, Starr is put in a seemingly unwinnable situation. Will she remain silent to avoid the stereotypes and alienation of the Williamson Prep community, as well as a growing media firestorm? Will she testify in front of a grand jury, risking retaliation against her family by both the police and a local drug kingpin (Anthony Mackie) who Khalil was working for? Will she speak out for Khalil, who is being convicted in the court of public opinion as a criminal who got what he deserved? Or will Starr chart her own course, grasping the importance of the moment in the context of the decades of mistreatment African Americans have suffered, which she is only truly internalizing for the first time?
First, a few things to get out of the way. Despite the fact that The Hate U Give won multiple teen/youth book awards, the movie can and should be seen by people of all ages. None of its themes or content are dumbed down or sanitized for younger audiences, yet they contain the kinds of visceral truths that young people can undoubtedly understand. It’s the kind of coming-of-age story that “serious” movie fans would consider as being for adults if it was a foreign or indie-feeling film like Call Me By Your Name or Moonlight, but is placed on a lower tier if produced by a major American studio (20th Century Fox made The Hate U Give). In addition, The Hate U Give is not just for an “urban” (meaning “black”) audience, and arguably might have a greater impact on non-black viewers, especially those who consider themselves to be progressive, non-racist allies and friends of black people (more on this later).
With that said, The Hate U Give is, by far, the best, most important, most pertinent movie I’ve seen in 2018 so far. It’s my pick for the Best Picture Oscar, and at least deserves to win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Despite being just twenty years old, Amandla Stenberg deserves a Best Actress nomination — it’s hard to imagine any other young actresses who could carry a film with the scope and weight of The Hate U Give, just as Starr must shoulder the responsibilities she feels towards herself, her and Khalil’s families, the residents of Garden Heights, and black Americans across the country hungering for justice and to be treated as full human beings.
After seeing The Hate U Give, I was not surprised to learn that it was based on a book. In fact, the novel, which was Angie Thomas’ first and stayed atop the New York Times young adult best-seller list for 50 weeks, clocks in at 464 pages, which helps explain the film’s richness in touching on so many aspects of Starr’s two worlds and the many characters who inhabit it. This includes her uncle Carlos (Common) who is a police officer, Starr’s mother Lisa (Regina Hall) who just wants to keep her family safe and moving forward, a civil rights lawyer played by Issa Rae, Sabrina Carpenter as Starr’s white friend who doesn’t grasp the callousness of her Blue/All Lives Matter-style defense of the cop who killed Khalil, and Starr’s father Maverick (an Oscarworthy Russell Hornsby), a reformed gang member turned small businessman and a champion of Black Power ideology.
While some might see these many storylines as evidence of the film’s lack of focus, I see them more as an effort to portray the nuance, complexities, and contradictions of the black experience, sometimes utilizing a shorthand that doesn’t go out of its way to translate its message for non-black audiences. Because while The Hate U Give should be seen by audiences of all ages and races, it is unapologetically a black story, beginning with the film’s opening scene where Maverick delivers the Talk to younger versions of Starr and her two siblings at the dining room table, explaining how they should conduct themselves when they are inevitably confronted by police officers who might kill them for any or no reason, while simultaneously encouraging the kids to take pride in their blackness. At the end of the conversation, Maverick hands them copies of the Black Panther Ten-Point Program, calling it “our bill of rights”.
I had read about the Talk before but had never heard of the Ten-Point Program and promptly looked it up when I got home from the screening. This was one instance where The Hate U Give taught me something important about both American history and the black experience, which is why I feel that the film has unique potential as a much-needed educational tool for non-black allies who are convinced that they are free of racism and prejudice, since most of the white characters in the film — including Starr’s friends, classmates, and even her boyfriend Chris (K.J. Apa) — would probably claim the same. Yet Starr still feels the inequality through the ways her classmates imitate blackness to be cool while simultaneously ignoring the plight of actual black people, how they pretend to care about Khalil’s death but only as an excuse to cut class, and the pressure Starr feels to hold her tongue, to flatten both herself and her blackness, in order to make the white people around her more comfortable with and accepting of her presence. The Hate U Give provides the kind of education a well-meaning boy like Chris needs as he learns that overcoming racism does not mean claiming that he “doesn’t see race”, and that supporting Starr in her journey does not mean saving her or making himself the hero of her story.
And by seeing the events of the film through the eyes of an intelligent, sensitive, conflicted, yet resilient young black woman, The Hate U Give has the opportunity to educate America about what Black Lives Matter actually means. While so many mostly white Americans mendaciously proclaim that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization, or that football players kneeling during the National Anthem is about hating America and disrespecting soldiers, or that Black Lives Matter is itself racist since All Lives Matter, The Hate U Give, through the power of storytelling, shows that black people aren’t asking for anything radical or threatening. They and their allies simply want a country where black people can live free of government-sanctioned harassment and institutional racism, where any encounter with a police officer should not be a potential death sentence, and where those who murder unarmed black people, including children, are not given more sympathy and lenience than those they’ve killed.
The fact that The Hate U Give, as the first film of its kind, accomplishes so much with so much riding on it and with such heart, soul, nuance, realism, and excellence is nothing short of a triumph.
(The Hate U Give opens today in limited release. It opens nationwide on October 19.)
