In a parallel universe, ”Antebellum” could feature as a perverse reboot of “Charlie’s Angels.” Picture Janelle Monáe’s ultra-confident, Afrofuturist, 21st century sociologist / yoga master / equestrian, Veronica being sent back in time, undercover as Eden to liberate slaves from their Confederate overlords. Her skills are perfectly honed to lead a mass rebellion. Monáe rocks a trouser suit with pristine abandon and her sideways glances cut the deepest of any actor working today (just watch her kill every scene in the second season of “Homecoming”). High concept or bad taste? We wouldn’t doubt for a minute she would get the job done. Have you seen her on stage? She dons the greatest cape in the modern world. Confounding the Confederates should be child’s play.
Frustratingly, “Antebellum” doesn’t have the courage of its convictions or the absurdist wit of “Sorry to Bother You” to fully embrace the “Charlies Angel’s” premise. Instead it tries to derail the small, but important train of Black, anti-racist speculative fiction that began with, “Get Out” triumphed at the Emmys with “Watchmen” and continues with the raucously brilliant, “Lovecraft Country” with cheap sleight of hand. Spike Lee knowingly said he wanted, ‘To drive a nail through the coffin” of the Hood movie in the 1990s with his masterful, “Clockers” and “Live and Let Die” brought about the early demise of Blaxploitation films when James Bond embraced that genre, but “Antebellum” believes it is akin to Octavia Butler’s novel, “Kindred” when it is actually an X-rated episode of, “Scooby-Do” wrapped up in a Slavesploitation film.
Rather than glide through the bad guys punctuated by cheesy incidental music, Monáe’s twin identities are cruelly sucker punched. The Confederates don’t like privileged black women calling them out and skewer the narrative. For 40 mins Eden is beaten, branded and raped by her hideous masters. The General, only known as Him, wants to know her name but won’t let her speak. Jack Huston as Captain Jasper sneers a great impersonation of evil Billy Zane, quick to replace anachronistic jewellery around the neck of an escaped slave with a noose. The carnage is shot in the beautiful hues of the magic hour, set up by a stunning long take that revels in the holocaust caused by Manifest Destiny. The barbarity is methodical, the revenge that follows is predictable.
Except, sort of, it isn’t. In an alternate timeline Monáe is Veronica, out on the razzle dazzle with her super hip Angels in Louisiana, hitting up men and putting would-be suitors, racist waiters and hotel staff in their place. Gabourey Sidibe owns the town as Dawn, a relationship coach but the “Sex and the City” vibes appear slight, devaluing the trauma of the plantation. Maybe that’s the point? The suffering and forbearance of Veronica and Dawn’s ancestors, the eternal hope of a better life under obscene suffering, allows them to move to a better table in a restaurant and feel up their Uber driver. It’s a crass pay off but Trump’s America doesn’t set the bar too high.
That’s not to say that ‘Antebellum” doesn’t haunt you in places. The Uber kidnap has the same horrifying intensity as Helen Mirren’s face in her last shot in “The Long Good Friday” and Jena Malone’s back-handed compliments to Veronica bristle with coded racism. But it isn’t enough. Instead of an electrifying, arch, metaphysical examination of ancestorial memory starring a unique talent like Monáe, a stinging attack on the far right and middle-class white liberals alike, we are served a twist of southern comfort, a Dixieland Disneyland, where Black Lives Matter only to serve the rug-pull narrative.