Directing: A-
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A+
Editing: A

I’m dying to know what Black people think of Passing, the stunning directorial debut by Rebecca Hall, available on Netflix today. Even to say that seems a little delicate, from me, a white person, who knows full well that Black people are not a monolith: surely reactions and opinions are as widely varied as the Black community itself. Still, reactions from Black audiences are going to hold more weight, for obvious reasons: this is a movie about a light-skinned Black woman “passing” as white in New York City in the 1920s.

And what of Black critics? I need to seek out movie reviewers of color. The ones I tend to recognize and gravitate toward are too uniformly white. This film has an incredibly high rating of 83 on MetaCritic—”must-see,” by their metrics—but the majority of the critics making up that average are going to be white. Whenever there is a movie about Black people or the Black experience, I rather wish there were a “Black Metacritic,” so I could see how they feel about their own representation on film, at least on average. Granted, it can be argued that this “on average” angle is itself problematic. I need to seek out individual movie critics of color, find the ones whose writing speaks to me, and keep up with their content.

As things stand now, I can only go by my own reaction, which is to be truly, deeply impressed with this film—especially knowing Rebecca Hall, an actor from films like Vicky Cristina Barcelona and the 2016 indie Christine in which she played the real-life news anchor who shot herself on camera, has never directed a feature film before. These movies she’s acted in, have been largely fine but far from masterpieces (she was most recently in Godzilla vs. Kong earlier this year), and would certainly not make anyone think her career was headed toward the creation of a near masterpiece. Maybe she got tired of assisting others in the production of mediocrity, and concluded she could do better herself.

If that’s the case, then she was more right than can hardly be believed. Still, I can’t help but be skeptical of her position as a white woman directing and writing a movie about Black people. Is she truly credible as the storyteller here? Hall is the daughter of opera singer Maria Ewing, whose father was African American, Native American and Scottish. This lineage is reportedly what makes Passing “deeply personal” to Hall, which on the surface is perfectly understandable. On the other hand, I can’t help but think about the embarrassing history of clearly white people adorning themselves with dream catchers because they are “one-eighth Native American.” To be fair, I have seen no evidence of Hall personally appropriating Black culture.

The flip side of this is how the white majority in 1920s America would have regarded Rebecca Hall’s mother—or, arguably, Hall herself, were her ancestry known. The idea of “passing” was not likely lost on Hall’s grandfather, or on her mother. This may make Hall uniquely suited to telling this story—or at least, as was actually the case, adapting the 1929 novel of the same name by Nella Larsen, a multiracial woman with an Afro-Caribbean father. I had never heard of this novel before this film, but it must be a fascinating read, especially from someone actually living in the time it was set.

I haven’t even gotten to the many layers and deep nuances of the film adaptation of Passing itself, which has a tone, a vibe if you will, I have not felt since the phenomenal 2002 Todd Haynes film Far From Heaven, one of my all-time favorite films. That film also examined race, this time in the context of the 1950s, but it was still from a white viewpoint. Passing is very much a Black story—in fact, it’s not even directly about the woman “passing” as white, Clare (Ruth Negga). It’s much more about her childhood friend Irene (Tessa Thimpson), and how she struggles with all the implications of Clare living her everyday life as a white woman—right down to marrying an unsuspecting and comfortably racist white man (Alexander Skarsgård) and having a child with him.

Irene is the protagonist, a woman who, in the subtly attention-grabbing opening scene, finds herself “passing” almost by accident while shopping in higher-end stores of New York, tilting her large hat to obscure her face just enough. From the start, the dialogue is highly stylized, meticulously crafted, exquisitely written. Combine that with incredible performances nearly across the board and stunning black and white cinematography by Eduard Grau (A Single Man), and Passing is practically impossible for any cinephile, anyone with an appreciation for film as art, to resist.

And then there’s the unusual privilege enjoyed by Irene, and her doctor husband Brian (André Holland), and the added layers of classism seen just within the Black community here. There is clear allusion to colorism here, a topic I will leave to the Black community as I have no relevant “takes” on that from my position; suffice it to say, Irene and Brian have a housekeeper of their own, and how much darker her skin is, is clearly not an accident.

Passing ultimately tracks the rekindled friendship between Irene and Clare, and how shaken Irene is by the direction Clare’s life has taken. This all leads to a truly unexpected and deliberately ambiguous ending. This movie was so gorgeously shot I truly wish I could have seen it in a theater (it did get an Oscar-qualifying limited release ion October 27), but at this moment I was rather glad I was seeing it on Netflix: I had to rewind it two or three times in an attempt to figure out what I was seeing. I’m not convinced that particular ambiguity was essential, but, when it comes to how fantastic I found the movie otherwise, it was also immaterial.

I could not pretend to know what the average viewer will feel about Passing, although its high critical acclaim is unsurprising. Either way, this is a movie that must be seen.

*A beautiful portrait of emotional and moral ambivalence.*

Ovrall: A