Medicine for Melancholy
Medicine for Melancholy is a 2008 independent film by Barry Jenkins, starring Wyatt Cenac, Tracey Heggins, and Elizabeth Acker. The film appeared at several film festivals in 2008, including South by Southwest, Maryland Film Festival, and The Toronto International Film Festival.
Plot Summary
Medicine for Melancholy chronicles the one-day romance of Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo’ (Tracey Heggins), two Black twenty-somethings, who have a one night stand and end up spending a full day and night together, despite Jo’s long-distance relationship with a wealthy, white gallery owner. The characters wake up in someone else's bed after a party, and head their separate ways. Jo' leaves her wallet in their shared taxi, and they reconnect when he returns it to her at her apartment. Throughout the day, Micah and Jo' visit the Museum of the African Diaspora, stumble upon an affordable housing coalition meeting, and attend a concert. Venturing around San Francisco, the characters discuss race and gentrification with regard to the low percentage of African Americans living in San Francisco.[1] Micah is openly critical of Jo's interracial relationship, as he struggles to reconcile his African American identity with the very white world of the Hipster scene in San Francisco.
Visual Effects and Portrayals of Black Love
The film has a unique look owing to the desaturation of images. Filmmakers went through the film shot by shot and pulled out the majority of color. In an interview, director Barry Jenkins stated that certain scenes in the film have more color to reflect when the characters aren't thinking about race or housing issues. [2] From the gray tint of the film, the minimalist apartment settings, Jo's short straight haircut, the absence of Jo's bra, and the absence of irrelevant supporting actors - the audience is stripped of all notions of what black people should look like, what black love should look like, or what it should mean. It shatters our inclination to romanticize romance. The reality is that blackness is not the only factor one considers in a relationship, and it is not the only reason why two people should fall in love.[3]
Themes
Medicine for Melancholy mainly confronts themes of African American assimilation into "Hipster" or "Indie" culture. San Francisco, arguably the beating heart of these two counter-cultures, serves also as a racial foil: the city has a tiny African-American population of 7% [4] As Micah points out in the film, at an average San Franciscan concert it is not unusual for the crowd to be completely White except for one or two people of color; neither of whom is there with other people of color. This extreme racial isolation is mirrored in Hipster culture itself, one which claims to be "raceless," and yet (as Micah highlights) almost is completely defined by a performance of Whiteness.
Racial Identity
Writer/director Barry Jenkins has described the films' two main characters as playing out a debate about identity politics. Each of the two main characters embodies an ideology. Jenkins saw the character of Micah as a man who was always building barriers, whereas Jo thinks that race is a limiter. [5] Accusing Jo' of assimilation, Micah strives to reclaim his essential "Blackness" as Jo' contrastingly claims Micah has a "hang up" about his race and strives to overcome her own.
Melancholy
As a part of the title, melancholy is a key theme of the film. There’s a sorrow within the film and main characters there that is sought to be healed (with some sort of medicine). Melancholy is pensive sadness, and viewers get both that contemplation, reflection, and blues throughout the film. First, this is present in the film’s aesthetic—gray, chill simple, and mundane. In this way, the film is able to take on the larger structural analysis of gentrification by contemplating the everyday. Micah and Jo are in the middle of all this. This film takes on the everyday, but through the not so everyday of spending the entire day in different parts of the city with a stranger. Everything is gray--not so simple or clear cut.
The haunting and sadness in the film is tied to space. In the film, Micah is melancholic for what used to be, for place, for San Francisco. There’s an absence, then, and what used to be is now haunting him and the film. This is underlined by scenes that pan the landscape of San Francisco interwoven with scenes of Micah and Jo spending time together, quietly each of them contemplating. They literally walk through the process of gentrification, together, and negotiate their positions within it.
Moreover, for the displaced Black, Chicanos/Latinos, and Native folks of San Francisco, that haunting is a colonial haunting. Really underlining Medicine for Melancholy is the post/neo/colonial condition of San Francisco. There is a sadness about what has transpired and what is to come.
Critical Reception
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, calling the actors "effortlessly engaging" and the direction "assured"; he also noted the film was "beautifully photographed." [6] It was a New York Times Critics' Pick [7] and nominated for three 2008 Independent Spirit Awards. [8] On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an 83% fresh rating. [9]
References
- ↑ U.S. Census Bureau. "San Francisco County Quickfacts". Retrieved 5 March 2012.
- ↑ https://tribecafilm.com/stories/512c0d351c7d76d9a900058e-a-cure-for-the-blues-medi
- ↑ "Medicine for Melancholy".
- ↑ U.S. Census Bureau. "San Francisco County Quickfacts". Retrieved 5 March 2012.
- ↑ https://tribecafilm.com/stories/512c0d351c7d76d9a900058e-a-cure-for-the-blues-medi
- ↑ {http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/medicine-for-melancholy-2009}
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/movies/movie/451314/Medicine-for-Melancholy/awards
- ↑ http://www.imdb.com/event/ev0000349/2009
- ↑ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/medicine_for_melancholy/?search=medicine%20for%20melancholy