Reviewing Steve McQueen’s
Small Axe, a collection of films, for
The New Yorker, the masterful cultural critic Doreen St Félix writes: “One way to measure a filmmaker’s commitment to his subject is to look at the not so minor details, such as costumes, wigs, and food. If the paraphernalia of a people doesn’t feel forged but, rather, appears to have been lifted unmolested from observation or memory, or both, then the effect is immersion – the melding of reality with the world of the screen. Black folks haven’t often felt that rush.”
She finds in McQueen’s work “a kind of revolutionary attention… paid to the physical world of the characters” that is evident across scenes. It is in “head-wrapped women fussing over a bubbling vat of sunshine-yellow curry goat; [and in] men haggling over cards in true patois”. This, St Felix writes, demonstrates “the sincerity of the project’s creator, who is publicly claiming his place in a community, and who wants every aspect in the political tableau to be just so.”