The Immigrant Experience

 A pair of entries from Steve McQueen's series of "Small Axe" films, focusing on the experiences of West Indian immigrants in England from the 1960s to the '80s.

LOVERS ROCK (A-minus) - A reverie about one night in the lives of young party-goers, this qualifies as a true slice of life, or even just a vivid memory from the 1970s. Steve McQueen gets his fingernails dirty re-creating a neighborhood house party, from the cooking of the food and the setting up of the turntables and amps to the arrival of the crowd stomping and swaying to the songs we now call dusties.

We experience this through the eyes of Amarah-Jae St. Aubin as Martha, who has a meet-cute with Franklyn (Michael Ward) that leads to the inevitable slow-dance and the threat of staying out till dawn. (For whatever reason, Martha had to sneak out of her house.) Circulating around them are a vague cast of characters who are either spinning music, tearing up the dance floor or making their move on the opposite sex. 

With this and "Red, White and Blue," I had to use subtitles to keep up with the patois of the West Indian immigrants, and even then some of the jargon went over my head. But that's not really a flaw. This film, barely longer than an hour, is about mood and style. The swirl of sensations culminates in the middle of the film when the crowd grinds of an obscure R&B classic "Silly Games," singing along with fervor as the recording eventually cuts out but the singing continues a cappella for minutes, until we can hear shoes scraping on the wood floor, as if no one wants the song or the night to ever end. You could say the same about the movie itself.

RED, WHITE AND BLUE (B) - McQueen didn't interest us with "Hunger" in 2008, and we walked out of his brutal "12 Years a Slave," but, as indicated above, he has found a groove and a distinct voice mining the fertile period of his youth. Here he is blessed with John Boyega ("Star Wars") as Leroy Logan, a young immigrant in London who vows to respond to police mistreatment of his people by becoming a cop himself. This comes as an outrage to his father, Ken (a stern Steve Toussaint), who recently got an undue roughing up from the men in blue (and who is pursuing the matter in court). 

Leroy excels at the academy, but once on the beat, he and an East Asian rookie experience racist taunts and cold shoulders from the overwhelmingly white crew, while also drawing sneers from those in the immigrant community who consider the men sell-outs to the system. Leroy, determined to plant the seed of change (while also providing for his wife and baby), perseveres, and McQueen strips the stories to simple essentials, as if producing an "Afterschool Special."

Leroy is practical, whereas his father is hard-headed and prideful. Will the son engender a generational shift that will change British society? We don't have enough time here for such a sweeping dramatic wringing out of history. Instead, we get an earnest portrayal of one man trying to make a difference. This one is a little flat, but it's effective.

BONUS TRACKS

"Lovers Rock" seethes with deep cuts from someone's R&B and dub collections. A central scene involves "Silly Games" by Janet Kay:

And then there is the mesmerizing "More Warning" from King Tubby & the Aggrovators: