From the very first moment of Native Son, the audience is overwhelmed by the dizzying blend of visual style and narrative intensity. Rashid Johnson, in his directorial debut, uses his career as a postmodern artist to create a beautiful reimagining of Richard Wright’s incredible novel, bringing it into a contemporary context that serves to be a powerful and often heartwrenching portrayal of society and all of its shortcomings. An intricate, gorgeous and extremely heartbreaking film about race relations, it serves to be another addition to the canon of brilliant works from iconoclastic black writers being portrayed on screen, and following only months after the very first film adaptation of a James Baldwin novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, we find ourselves almost submerged in a renaissance of classic resistance literature. Native Son may not reach the heights that it could have, perhaps limited by both its small scale, the divisive nature of the novel and the audacious vision of the director who opted for a more experimental approach (not as if that was a shortcoming in any way), we can’t deny that Native Son is one of the year’s most powerful films. It is a significant work, and as it slowly reveals itself as a hidden masterpiece to audiences who weren’t initially witness to it on release (as it was released on HBO without much publicity), more viewers will be able to see the extraordinary lengths Johnson and his creative collaborators went to in order to bring Wright’s extraordinary work to modern times.

Bigger Thomas (Ashton Sanders) is a young man living in Chicago – he has very few friends, and with the exception of his girlfriend, Bessie (Kiki Layne), and his family, he doesn’t care too much for others. His entire existence is one of rebellion, with everything from the clothes he wears to the media he consumes portraying a young man trying very hard to be an individual. He hears about a job that interests him – a wealthy family in an affluent suburb is in need of a chauffeur to escort the various members around the city and beyond, in their daily lives. It is a simple job, but one that pays extremely well, and considering his employers are the genial Will Dalton (Bill Camp) and his blind wife (Elizabeth Marvel), Bigger is quite content with doing what he has to do. The only obstacle comes in the form of the Daltons’ daughter, Mary (Margaret Qualley), the archetypal “outraged youth” who despises her upper-class upbring and rather spends her evenings at protest meetings where she vehemently opposes the life she grew up with, although it is likely this is just a way of pleasing her middle-class boyfriend Jan (Nick Robinson), who is highly politically-charged. Mary is wild, seductive and irresponsible, and she cares very little about the consequences of her actions, and Bigger finds himself having to protect her from danger. Yet, when he unintentionally gets caught in her manipulative games purely by accident, he finds the course of his life changed considerably.

Native Son is one of those films that captivates you from the very first moment – and the fact that this film was made by someone who has previously worked as a visual artist is made evident throughout. Johnson conducts a fascinating experiment with Native Son, one that isn’t unchartered territory, but also not seen very often. Wright’s novel was written in 1940, and set in the same period, one of social and political turmoil – the war was on the doorstep of the nation, but at home, a race war was brewing. The apex of the Civil Rights Movement was impending, with the seeds of social change being sown. Johnson moves the story to a contemporary context, but in a way that doesn’t imply the original period was archaic or outdated, but rather as a way of showing how, despite considerable social change, some things unfortunately still remain the same. This version of Native Son (the second after a smaller film production in 1986), is an adaptation that doesn’t just place the story in a contemporary context by changing the period and peppering in some modern references but rather adapts its core themes to a current perspective. These central ideas evoked by Wright were resonant at the original time of publication, and remain powerful now, and by using Wright’s beautiful but harrowing story and combining it with his own unique artistic vision, Johnson effectively manages to portray the world we live in, and the social injustices many have to go through.

It is quite difficult to look at Native Son as just a film – it is far more than just an adaptation of its source material. Its appropriate, because the original novel was far from just a straightforward text – and Wright’s work, while undeniably beautiful, is also difficult, not because of the prose he uses (very few writers of his generation could write scenes as evocative and emotional as him), but because his work is raw, brutal and harrowing. Johnson, despite being a newcomer to filmmaking, seems to be a perfect fit for this material, as his sensibilities are not borne from a place of storytelling, but through the representation of themes and ideas. Wright has often been cited as someone who, despite the brilliance of his narratives, was most profoundly talented when it came to the underlying themes and images of his novels, with his words coming together to create a tapestry of the time in which they were written. Native Son is thus a perfect adaptation of Wright’s novel, and both its visual and narrative style evoke a very different kind of filmmaking. In making this film, Johnson seems to be combining the kitchen-sink grittiness of great cinematic realists like Alan Clarke and his soaring odes to youthful rebellion (I was reminded several times of Clarke’s brilliant but equally harrowing Made in Britain a few times throughout this film) and the poignant, palpable anger produced in the time of great social despair by authors like Wright, Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston and many others, disenfranchised artists who used their pens as weapons against institutionalized oppression and as a way of shedding light on society’s shortcomings.

The character of Bigger Thomas is one of the more complex creations of his time. He is an individual with two sides – the first being the one presented to the outside world, where he is gentle, quiet and unassuming. The character even remarks that this is “the good negro act”, which is the reason why he manages to remain relatively innocent, even after committing a violent crime. No one suspects people like Bigger Thomas, because he’s just too genial to ever do something harmful to anyone, almost a subversion of the “house negro” archetype (a label used as a way of degrading our protagonist by one of his adversaries), the harmful portrayal of black servants as dormant, quiet and likeable, but also not particularly human in the same way that their white employers are. The other side of Bigger is the one hidden from the outside world, that of the rebellious, angry and defiant youth, someone who is fighting the world on his own terms. The character is certainly one with many different layers, and thus it required someone who would bring the same level of intensity to the role. Ashton Sanders, who was a standout in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, occupies the role, playing the titular native son who is fighting against a system that tries to label him in one way. Sanders is just extraordinary – his performance is one that is filled with numerous complexities and idiosyncrasies. He conveys every emotion with such dynamic might, and whether they are scenes of internalized struggle (normally accompanied by hauntingly beautiful narration), or in outward anger, Sanders is utterly brilliant, finding the right balance between the different sides of the character. Bigger Thomas is neither a hero nor a villain, and while he eventually devolves into a despicable character, Sanders humanizes him profoundly, finding a core to the character that suggests something far deeper than what we’d expect.

Native Son is filled with subtle references and visual clues that makes viewing this film an active experience – and none of these concepts are put there merely for show, but rather hint at a much deeper meaning throughout the film. Culture is a pivotal aspect of this film, and Johnson makes sure to create a powerful cultural tapestry in how he develops Bigger Thomas into his own version of the character. The main method of characterization employed by Johnson is naturally that of art, using it as a way to explore the mind of a troubled young man. Throughout the film, we see Bigger engaged in various forms of cultural expression, whether it be listening to hardcore punk or resistance metal (such as Dead Kennedys and Death), reading a blend of classic and contemporary black literature (we see Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, amongst others) and watching blaxploitation films at a local cinema. These cultural references are all woven into the film as a way of portraying Bigger’s unique perspective. One of the underlying themes of Native Son is that of resistance, but not only to the social injustices present, but also to stereotypes, which may appear innocuous, but are actually quite harmful. When asked if he likes Tupac, Biggie Smalls or Jay-Z, Bigger’s response of “none of the above” speaks to a young man desperately fighting society’s tendency to label. He is constantly defying stereotypical expectations others put on him. Eventually, the great tragedy of this harrowing story is that Bigger’s defiance of expectations eventually leads him to become the very epitome of those stereotypes, not only through his own fault but through the perceptions of others.

Johnson, as we’ve mentioned, is an artist who has peddled his wares as someone profoundly angry with the establishment, using his craft to tell stories and convey messages that are socially-charged. This is evident in Native Son, with the director’s unique perspective and intensity in portraying social injustice being overtly present. However, even on the purely aesthetic level, it is clear that Native Son is the work of a visual artist, someone with a particular style that is replicated into the beautiful images we are presented with. Native Son is a proudly independent film, never opting for opulence or excess, but that doesn’t mean there is a lack of gorgeous moments. Throughout the film, we see sequences that are quite beautiful in how they’re presented, juxtaposed with the disconcerting context surrounding them. Native Son as a novel was one that would be naturally difficult to adapt to the screen – so much of it takes the form of narration, where the main character is deep in thought, musing on life and expressing himself internally in a way that he’d never explicitly show to the world around him. Adapting this novel would be challenging because a more straightforward film would remove these beautiful moments of introspection. Johnson deftly adapts the novel in a way that not only manages to keep these moments intact but also allows him to explore them artistically. Just taken on the visual level, Native Son is gorgeous, which only makes the narrative underpinnings all the more impactful.

Native Son is a vital American novel – it presents us with a horrifying but unfortunately truthful version of history, showing us a form of social structure that is rarely portrayed with such honesty. There is certainly a reason why the works of Richard Wright have become pivotal pieces of artistic expression. Rashid Johnson challenged himself to adapt this incredible novel into a film, and the result is extraordinary. It is an uncomfortable film, and the way it translates themes from nearly eight decades ago into a current context is disconcerting, to say the least. This is not an easy film to watch, and the second half of this film is certainly quite terrifying in its own way. Yet, there are moments of unabashed beauty scattered throughout the film – whether it be the pulchritude of a single shot, or Sanders’ incredible leading performance, or the roaring anger at the core of the story that demands change to societal structures and how we perceive each other. This is a film that has a great deal of might and is capable of stirring considerable thought and starting discussions. It is, for this reason alone, an essential film, one that conveys a vital message that needs to be heard by all perspectives. A truly brilliant film, one that may leave the viewer shaken, but also profoundly moved by the raw, emotional complexities of this astonishing work.