[Film Review] Antebellum (2020)

I’d not encountered the word “Antebellum” until this film came along: it refers to the period in the history of the Southern United States between the American Revolution and the Civil War in 1861. Most of Antebellum therefore has a period plantation setting, a contained world in which Black slaves are there to serve and not speak, and in which they are broken in like animals.

Janelle Monáe plays one such slave, named Eden by the general who seems to own the plantation. She is his favourite (amongst many), but she has escape on her mind all the time. This has to be planned with extreme care, of course: the film sets the scene by showing us the fate of slaves who are captured while trying to escape.

Monáe also plays Veronica Henley, a modern and well-off writer with a happy young family. The middle third of the film presents a couple of days in a book tour promoting what appears to be a pop-psychology book for “disenfranchised Black women”. This section of the film shows a stark contrast between the lives of Black Americans approximately 250 years apart, the life-and-death risks of civil war times versus micro-aggressions of the modern world. Antebellum only shows a very small subsection of contemporary Black America, mind you: the wealthy, highly literate set, not the working class or those impacted more by crime, for example (I have to wonder just how “disenfranchised” Henley’s audience really is compared to the wider Black demographic).

It’s not clear how these two lives, these two worlds are connected until the story gradually unfolds. I didn’t know whether it would be a case of alternate realities, a dream informing the modern woman’s writing, reincarnation or simply a contrast for the sake of making some point. Modern and period worlds bleed together at one point via the sound of a cell phone, and I must say it is introduced neatly enough that I found it more intriguing than confusing. Of course, I’m not going to tell you how (or whether) this connection is resolved, but I will tell you that it does reward a second viewing.

Antebellum’s characters are interesting; especially as there are a few who appear in both settings. The period parts of the film are presented like any other glossy civil war era drama, with the Confederate soldiers/overseers as stereotypically and sneeringly bad as Nazis are in many Second World War films. The general (Eric Lange) and his daughter (Jena Malone) were prime examples, lording over their territory, while never stooping to getting their hands dirty. There was one scene with a little nuance granted to a minor white character, but it didn’t last; and virtually no nuance among the slave characters at all. The acting seemed a little better in the present day settings (at least amongst Veronica and her peers); though it may simply be that their characters were able to behave more naturally, which made the roles less demanding.

Antebellum was written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, their first feature film; and it is very cleverly constructed to demonstrate the point made in the quotation which appears at the start:

William Faulkner — 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.'

Interestingly, I watched Antebellum the day after I watched The Forever Purge, another film which seems to say racial prejudice simply will not be allowed to stay in the past. In both films, there is a very clear binary to the moral stance (though one character in The Forever Purge was allowed a little development): bigots bad, victims of prejudice good. In the case of Antebellum, ramping up the two-dimensional good/bad contrast in this way does cause the film to be more sensational than gritty, unfortunately; and the cleverness seems to overshadow any message of the film by the time we get to the end.

Antebellum is on Digital Download, Blu-ray and DVD now August from Lionsgate UK

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