Blackbird: I know why the caged bird sings

3 1/2 Popcorn Kernels

Blackbird can be a difficult movie to review. It is a movie that stands alone in its technique and character. Not many of the studios are brave (or is the work brazen) enough to put out a Gay African American coming-of-age story - leaves you to wonder who is really in the closet.

Blackbird tells the story of Randy Rousseau (Julian Walker); a young black man trapped in the cage that society and church have set for him, but like all caged animals, they yearn to be set free. In his repression he has several wet dreams about a classmate in his school, which suddenly become more intense when he becomes his partner in a rebellious play namely dubbed Romeo and Julian. These feelings are still strange to him, as he has not accepted his sexuality yet, he finds himself kneeling at his beside to an airbrushed image of Jesus above his bed, to forgive him.

Randy has a small group of supportive friends; Efrem (Gary LeRoi Gray) - the lustful realist, who cruises parks and isn't shy with his comments, and Crystal (Nikki Jane), who is also on the verge of sexual awakening and has a plan to get it over with. Both of them are aware of Randy's sexual orientation even if he isn't. They bond as the sounding board for reasoning with each other, and seem to have a natural chemistry in their acting (although Randy could use a bit more acting lessons).

Then there is the family that surrounds Randy, comprised of his mother Clair (Mo'nique), who is saddled with a heavy guilt brought about by the assumed abduction of her daughter. In her grief and turmoil, she eventually blames her son Randy, and his sins as being the cause of their grief as a punishment from God. She gives a palatable performance amidst her religiously zealot attitude, but it feels a bit too much at times, and the script doesn't do enough with it beside having her look forlorn and downtrodden with sudden bursts of anger and anguish. Her conflict is really within herself, and her emotions are hidden from others in such a way that they see her grief but don't confront it. She doesn't really get angry at her life, just at her son. It doesn't allow her to really ACT, just react, with others. And since she spends so much screen time with Randy, the son she hates, there is a distance there that the ending can't justify. It is a performance that lacks any true emotional range.

His father Lance (Isaiah Washington) is there also, having been divorced from Clair, he tries to bond with his son via short conversations while Randy walk home from school - and Lance is trailing alongside him in his pickup truck on the road (must be a kind town, that no one honks behind him at this pace). It is in these moments that have the greatest heart in the movie. In an industry where the father is deemed the ruler of bad behavior, it is good to see one who is making a difference in trying to get to know their child beyond the rules set out by society. This performance should quell the controversy that surrounded Isaiah when he did Grey's Anatomy. He shows patience, and a willingness to wait until Randy determines who he is, and that he will stand beside that decision whatever it is.

And helping him find that understanding is Marshall (Kevin Allasee), a white boy from another school, who has fallen for Randy. And while I don't like the "White Savior" in movies, where the black character comes to a cathartic experience with the help of his white counter-part, I will bypass this one, as Marshall doesn't come across as superior to Randy. Randy we can see has a lot of potential, and is very focused, and without Marshall's assistance, I can see him coming into his own. I just see Marshall as a way to get there sooner because we only have 2-hours in the movie. He is handsome, and while the interracial aspects are not brought out in this movie (which could have been a move all its own without the mother/daughter/abduction storyline), but I understand that the source material was not that of Patrick-Ian Polk.

Speaking of Patrick, who is the director, and has birthed such treats as Noah's Arch, Punks, The Skinny, and others - all giving meaning and a voice to the African American Gay Youth - gives us now a film with much less humor than I expect of him. I am sure there were such elements within the source material of Blackbird written by Larry Duplechan, but this film comes off as trying to be serious, with serious subjects, and somehow, it feels a bit watered down. I believe that may be due to the directing, but also to what is expected of big Hollywood cinema. This isn't a movie of loud talking monologues about religion, sexual orientation, or race - but it feels as if it could be. In many black movies there is That Moment - when emotions and circumstance culminates into that big moment (Malcom X his speech, Color Purple and the Juke Joint, and Selma during their confrontation), and Blackbird is missing one (despite the video/romance scene with Randy and Marshall).

But Blackbird is a movie to see, just because you can see and feel the effort it is trying to make by telling a story that needs to be told, to an audience that hasn't seen themselves represented on screen very much - and by that I mean in African American cinema as a whole. Everyone can get something out of this one, and isn't that what going to the movies is all about.