Clemency

CinemaSerf7/10

Feb 6, 2024

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This features a really poignant and strong effort from Alfre Woodard as the warden of a prison charged with ensuring the execution of prisoners. She, "Bernadine" is finding it increasingly more difficult to reconcile the responsibilities of her job with her own conscience and her marriage. None of these demons are helped when one such "procedure" goes awry and, though not her fault, she finds herself under increased scrutiny as Aldis Hodge's "Woods" is soon to follow. The performance elements of this from Woodard and from Wendell Pierce as her loving but increasingly exasperated husband "Jonathan" work well, creating a really quite powerful vision of a woman torn between remaining objective - she is, after all, doing her job - and of a woman increasingly appreciative of the terminal nature of her task and of her own failings and religiosity. The remainder of the drama, last minute appeals etc., works less well and Richard Schiff really doesn't deliver much at all as the convicted man's attorney "Lumetta" - a man who seems to be trying to imbue hope in a man based on wishful thinking and some far-fetched technicalities. Auteur Chinonye Chukwu takes her time with this impassioned story and that's no bad thing at times, allowing us to become a little more immersed in the character of the troubled "Bernadine". At other times, though, the pace really does need a bit of a shake. The whole isn't as good as the sum of the parts, but it's still quite a thought-provoking look at just where responsibility lies in circumstances none of us would ever want to experience.

The actors do a fantastic job with this script. But here's my problem: A black woman (2 strikes against her) in a warden position in a (most likely) for-profit, corporation-owned prison, in a back-assward state that murders clearly innocent black people, and she has empathy? This is far-fetched fantasy that is so unbelievable as to be cartoonish. Just to be clear, most of the for-profit prisons in the USA are in right-wing states (except maybe Colorado). The odds of these corporations hiring a woman, or black person, or both as warden would have be pretty damn slim.