The Underground Railroad

Directed by Barry Jenkins

This weekend, America celebrated its first Juneteenth, which commemorates the emancipation of the slaves in 1863. Also happens to be the weekend we finished viewing Barry Jenkins’ ten-episode adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Underground Railroad.” 

Both the book, and the Amazon Prime series, tell the tale of young Cora (Thuso Mbediu), a runaway slave in pre-Civil War Georgia, as she makes her way northward in search of freedom—and her mother Mabel (Sheila Atim) who had run away from the plantation years earlier. 

Her means of escape? The Underground Railroad—just not the railroad you know from the history books.

In Whitehead/Jenkins World, the Railroad

is an actual train that Cora rides on under the ground, with stops in various Southern states. These include South Carolina, where she happens upon a seemingly friendly town where she learns to her horror that Blacks are sterilized. In North Carolina, she’s hidden by an Abolitionist from an all-white evangelical community determined to exterminate Blacks altogether. Don’t want to give away much more than that. 

In hot pursuit of Cora is Ridgeway, the white slave catcher (Joel Edgarton) who is determined to return his runaway “property” to “its” rightful owner in Georgia. He uncannily follows Cora through the Carolinas, Tennessee and even Indiana, drinking moonshine and spouting alt-white nonsense about the “American imperative.”

I did read the book, but it takes the visual skill of Barry Jenkins (he directed “Moonlight”) to make Whitehead’s words jump off the page and onto the screen. His direction of Cora is flawless: Mbedu speaks with her large, soulful eyes, letting them tell the story of the degradations she has to endure on her flight from Georgia. Similarly, Edgarton gives serious competition, in the Most Terrifying Performance category, to Robert Mitchum in “Night of the Hunter.” These actors are only two members of a mostly all-Black ensemble who are mostly all-marvelous.

Caution: the film is beautifully imagined (the sequences of the train tunnels and stations are beyond great) but moments in UR are truly unbearable to watch. The train may be metaphorical, but the violence is real. Whippings, bodies hanging from trees, towns set on fire, mass killings of innocent people—it’s all there. No punches pulled.

Nobody ever said slavery was pretty—although some politicians even today say “it wasn’t that bad.”  If however you’re curious as to how the right director can portray a ghastly period in American history with beauty, intelligence and dignity, then it demands your attention. Most definitely got ours.