The best movies stay with you long after they are over and, in the case of The Hate U Give, it has stayed with me for days after seeing it. There are a power and honesty in the narrative that is poignant and all too important in today’s current climate and while it tells a very difficult story, it’s never preachy or looking to educate in an exceedingly heavyhanded way. It has taken me some days to process the film as a whole because I realized not only did I see a powerful film, I saw something that struck a personal chord in me.
I’m an African American male and my mom grew up in the inner city of Los Angeles. My mom saw many things growing up including friends who strayed into drugs and gang activity but also the emergence of how cops in that area treated those who were a product of their environment. Needless to say, my mom experienced a life I didn’t completely understand because my mom moved us out of the area when I was young and I experienced my upbringing in Redondo Beach, California. For those unfamiliar with the South Bay and its surrounding cities, it’s a predominately white environment surrounded by affluent homes and townhouses and a beach culture that is a far cry from the area my mom grew up in.
I went to middle school and high school in Manhattan Beach, another city within the South Bay and what I remember most, upon entering high school, was the breakdown we were given of the racial backgrounds at the school as I started my freshman year. Out of 2,500 students, there were only 52 blacks, including me. The bulk of the students consisted of Caucasians (1,500 to be exact) and it was the first time I got the expression that I was the minority. Despite that feeling, I went through my social upbringing during those times with mostly white friends and eventually, that became the norm. In my group, it wasn’t “this is my black friend Gaius,” we were just all the same, especially with dealing with the same teen angst and living in the same world with similar problems.
That’s certainly how I felt but I was always given reminders that things were different for me. My mom loved my friends going up but she was always honest about perception. There was always the running joke that if I got pulled over with a group of friends that I would be the only black person in the car and to always remember that. I call it a joke because it was something my mom presented in a funny manner but I also learned that my mom would tell me things using humor to really drive home the seriousness of certain situations. In the same breath as that joke, I was also taught what I needed to do if I was ever put in that situation. Don’t move. Don’t talk back. Always comply. Don’t give them a reason to do anything to you, even if you feel like you didn’t do anything wrong. It became evident that my white friends weren’t getting this talk and if they were, it certainly wasn’t for the same reasons.
Even with these precautions embedded in my head, I still lived with a bit of naivety where I still didn’t see color and thought those around me didn’t see it either. I’ve been lucky that I’ve never experienced a lot of these things personally but with the emergence of #BlackLivesMatter and the flood of stories of unarmed black men being gunned down or beaten by white cops, I began to learn that this was the stuff my mom was really trying to warn me about. It’s a subject I largely felt detached from until it became an unfortunate part of our nation’s narrative and then I had to experience how some of my white friends reacted to it. Most of them could identify that it was something they couldn’t fully understand and could really only over words of allegiance or support but there were also the select few who would spew comments like “well, you don’t need to worry about that happening to you because you’re different from THOSE black guys who are being stopped by the cops.” Sadly this is a direct quote from a few people I used to call friends. It’s when you hear things like that, that you realize those differences your mom tried to educate you about.
That’s where the personal connection to The Hate U Give lies. Every aspect of it isn’t truly connected to my life but there are nuances that are similar. Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg), creates two versions of her identity: one to hang out at home in her impoverished, drug-riddled Garden Heights neighborhood and one to attend the affluent private school, Williamson Prep, where she has white friends and a white love interest, Chris (K.J. Apa). For Starr, life is a balancing act – keeping her white boyfriend secret from her old-school father, Maverick (Russell Hornsby), while hiding her home life from the people she goes to school with. All that changes, however, one fateful night while she’s being driven home by her long-time friend, Khalil (Algee Smith). At a traffic stop, Khalil reaches for a hairbrush that, in the darkness, the cop thinks is a gun. Shots are fired and Khalil dies with Starr handcuffed by his side. Following the incident, life for Starr becomes less about coping with a divided identity and more about finding her own voice and standing up for the boy who bled out in the middle of the road.
When we think about films adapted from YA novels, we think of a genre that has grown increasingly old over the last few years. They’re either dystopian depictions of life in the distant future or cheesy romances that could only exist within the confines of a book. The Hate U Give, based on the YA novel by Angie Thomas, makes a strong case that Hollywood should continue to look to YA material to adapt but they really need to look into material that is grounded in reality. At its heart, The Hate U Give is a coming-of-age story – an unconventional one, to be sure, but a coming-of-age story nonetheless. Within that is a story about race in America and there is no secret that this is a hot button issue but director George Tillman Jr. with the help of screenwriter Audrey Wells, who sadly passed away from cancer the day before the film was released, offers a new perspective on a controversial issue by keeping the preaching to a minimum and allowing the characters, their circumstances, and their emotions to do the heavy lifting. It’s in that honesty that the film gets its message across.
What struck me the most was the empathy that the film has for the characters and their situations. It’s an empathy that the film wants the audience to have as well. I think that’s one of the main reasons the film hit me so hard, not only because the situation is relatable but because it strives to make viewers aware of what it means to be poor and black in America. He uses exposition sparingly – the warning of one father to his children about how to react during a police stop being an example (the scene had shades of the very talk I received growing up). Tillman prefers to allow images and emotions to convey the message. He avoids caricatures and cheap theatrics, something a lesser film would fall victim to. Although the cast is primarily black, there are sympathetic white characters. And not all of the characters of color are presented as good-hearted martyrs. The movie has a pallet full of grays and isn’t afraid to paint with them and by doing that, it gives the audience various scenarios to identify with. Maybe this story is your truth or maybe you’re a friend of someone who has had this be their truth. It’s depictions like this that spark healthy conversation and debate about issues that can sometimes divide us.
The cast is excellent across the board but make no mistake, this is a true star turn for Amandla Stenberg. The young actress gives an insightful and nuanced performance that is endearing, strong, heartbreaking and uplifting. She has to run a gamut of emotions and she never misses a bit. Depending on how stacked the Best Actress race is for the Oscars, I can see her securing a nomination and it would be much deserved. Providing her with top-notch support is Regina Hall and Russell Hornsby as her parents who represent both sides of a key issue. Hall’s character is true in her convictions but also knows the benefits of living outside of a lifestyle that is volatile. She represents the side of Starr that goes to Williamson Prep while Hornsby is Garden Heights through and through. Despite his rugged exterior and loyalty to his neighborhood, Hornsby shows a vulnerability in his relationship with his daughter that is a true representation that not all black fathers are deadbeats lowlifes. Seeing a positive depiction is truly refreshing.
Other supporting roles are adequately filled by Common, playing Starr’s uncle and a cop who provides a sincere and sympathetic police point-of-view of the situation in which Starr finds herself and K.J. Apa, who is a long way from Riverdale, sharing an honest chemistry with Stenberg that represents the understanding that some of your white friends can have about this plight even if they can’t directly identify with it.
I feel like the issue of race could possibly keep moviegoers away from experiencing the true power of this film. The mere mention of the subject ignites a politically-charged firestorm and obscures the film’s strengths in a cloud of partisan rhetoric (most of which is spoken by people who haven’t seen the movie). Yes, that subject is prevalent in the film and there’s no ignoring it but The Hate U Give is really about the power of standing up for your convictions and finding your voice so that you can stand tall in the wake of a corrupt system. The ending may be wrapped up too neatly but the messages in the film and the conversations it could spark, outweigh any issues you could have with how the story unfolds. I think the relatively safe nature of its conclusion is to show that out of the ashes of tragedy there are seeds of hope and it’s that hope that ignites change. I don’t think this is a movie you should see. I think it’s a movie you NEED to see.
