Screenshot: Amazon Studios
Barry Jenkins’ new Amazon Prime miniseries,
Underground Railroad, is a tour-de-force. At once gut-wrenching and awe-inspiring, I wrapped up the show convinced that we don’t even need television awards shows in 2022 because this cast and crew deserve all the accolades. This is one of those works of art that could be taught in film school for technical skills, acting school for craft, and high schools and colleges for history lessons. It is exquisite on every level.
[Some spoilers ahead]
The show is set in an alternate reality version of our world, sometime in the mid-1800s. In this world there is no talk of succession or civil war, but there are slave states and free states, as well as the Missouri Compromise mucking up things out west. The story begins in Georgia with Cora (Thuso Mbedu), a young woman enslaved on the Randall plantation: After the plantation is taken over by a man who delights in extensive cruelty, Cora flees with her friend Ceasar
The Underground Railroad, a new Amazon Prime Video series, tells the story of Cora (Thuso Mbedu).
This piece contains slight spoilers for âThe Underground Railroad.âÂ
I took a deep breath before starting âThe Underground Railroad,â Barry Jenkinsâ TV adaptation of Colson Whiteheadâs Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name.Â
The limited series, which premiered Friday on Amazon Prime Video, is a harrowing yet stunning 10-hour saga starring captivating newcomer Thuso Mbedu as Cora, an enslaved woman on a journey to freedom across the antebellum South by way of a literal subterranean train with conductors and secret passageways. Cora escapes the Randall Plantation in Georgia and makes it to the Carolinas, Tennessee and Indiana, with slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton) on her heels at every turn. Ridgeway, who failed to capture Coraâs mother when she escaped the plantation, is hellbent on catching Cora.
‘The Underground Railroad’ is traumatic, unflinching and relentless – also beautiful, must-see TV
By Bethonie ButlerThe Washington Post
Kyle Kaplan/Amazon Studios
Barry Jenkins unpacks two legacies in “The Underground Railroad.” One is ugly and horrific, the resounding echo of an institution that stripped human beings of their culture and identity and enslaved them for profit. The other is beautiful and stirring, marked by resilience and resolve.
These legacies have been intertwined for the last 400 years, but few, if any, onscreen efforts have explored their uneasy convergence as intentionally and cohesively as Jenkins’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The filmmaker brings Whitehead’s alternate history – anchored by a literal underground railroad that clandestinely transports runaway slaves – to vivid and visually stunning life.
ThyBlackMan.com) For anyone who tunes into
The Underground Railroad on Amazon Prime Video, it’s important to understand the genius of what you’re watching. It’s equally important to understand that you may not like what you see to the point of revulsion.
The award-winning novel by Colson Whitehead has been adapted for the screen by screenwriter Jihan Crowther with an assist by director Barry Jenkins, Jacqueline Hoyt, Nathan Parker Allison Davis and Adrienne Rush. On the earth, there is constant drama and strife centered around the institution of slavery. Cora (Thuso Mbedu) is a runaway slave in a perpetual state of escape. She’s hunted by an evil white slave tracker Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton,
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