Chapter & Verse - Film

For my New York City blog post, I attended a screening of the film Chapter & Verse at Columbia University’s Miller Theater. Directed by Jamal Joseph, this film takes place in present day Harlem, NY, and it tells the story of an African-American man named Lance Ingram who is recently released from jail after serving twelve years. Lance was placed in a halfway house, and tries to get a job as a computer technician, but no one wants to hire him because of his race. He eventually gets a job at a food delivery service called “Bread From The Heart.” One of the people he delivers to is a woman named Miss Maddy, and throughout the film they develop a strong friendship. Miss Maddy has a teenage grandson named Ty, who is in a gang, and Lance tries to be a positive mentor to him because he does not want to see Ty make the same mistakes he did when he was younger.

Later, Lance meets up with an old friend, Jomo, who had also served time in jail but has now turned his life around and owns a successful barbershop. Towards the end of the film, Miss Maddy gives Lance all the money she had saved up for Ty’s education because she is dying of cancer. She then commits suicide because she does not want to be killed by her disease. To help Ty, Lance pays the leader of the gang to leave Ty alone. This works for a little while, but then the gang decides to beat Ty up, which makes Lance furious, and he goes out to find these boys. When he does he fights them, and ends up killing the leader as well as a few others. Lance sacrifices everything by doing this, and he knows he will be sent back to jail, but he feels like it is the only way to truly protect Ty. In the final scene, Lance sits on the curb of the street near the bodies of the boys as the police cars pull up, and Jomo comes to the scene to take care of Ty, who had witnessed the event.

I found this film to be incredibly moving and well made. With Ty and the gang, the movie examines the external struggles of people of color growing up in a world where racism is unfortunately still very prevalent, as well as what it’s like to re-enter society after being incarcerated, as in the case of Lance and Jomo. Along with this, one of the core themes is how do broken people learn to love themselves and each other. In the talkback after the film, Jamal, the director, said that “1 in 8 black boys end up in college, [and] 1 in 3 end up in prison.” This statistic is horrible, and it shows the staggering amount of racism and injustice in today’s society. There is a scene in Chapter & Verse where many characters march in protest together against all the violence and police brutality directed against the black population. The director mentioned that this was especially powerful since the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner had happened around the time they were filming.

This film reminded me of Native Son by Richard Wright. In this novel, the world considers the main character, Bigger Thomas, to be of a lower social class due to his poverty and black skin. In 1930’s Chicago, Bigger is extremely confused, and he feels like it is unfair that white people have more privilege and opportunities in life. This overbearing oppression leads him to commit murder, which then results in his prosecution and death. Similarly, eighty-six years later in Chapter & Verse, society is still full of injustice and institutionalized racism, where black people are rejected from jobs based on their skin color, and teenagers feel like they can only get recognized if they are in a gang.

These two stories both shed light on how unfair and corrupting this world has been to minorities. Youth in lower social classes often have it the hardest, because what you learn when you are young stays with you for life. If Bigger, Ty, and Lance had felt like they were accepted and treated as equals in the larger community, it is likely that Bigger would not have murdered anyone, Ty would not have joined a gang, and Lance would not have felt compelled to do something that ended up sending him back to jail to protect a person he deeply cared about. One statement Jamal Joseph made at the talk back that struck me was that “we can’t be afraid of our youth, we cannot give up on our youth” (Joseph) And he is right. The youth are the future, and they deserve to feel like they have the right to every opportunity life has to offer.

Through the characters of Lance, Ty, and Jomo, this film teaches us about the course that even if the beginning of your life starts off rough due to your social class, it is never too late to turn your situation around or to help someone else. It also teaches us that an important part of the healing process is learning how to love yourself again, as well as others. One aspect our course that helps us understand the relevance of this film is our discussion about the Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels discuss how the “modern bourgeois society” has split “into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat,” or, in other words, the oppressors and the oppressed (Marx, Engels 1). In the film, the main characters represent the proletariats, and white supremacists, who promote inequality and injustice due to social class and race, represent the bourgeoisie. Even though the representation of the bourgeoisie is not physically prominent in the film, their presence is still strongly felt.
            Chapter & Verse is a powerful film and I am really glad I had the opportunity to see it. It was also fascinating to hear the director, as well as the other panelists, discuss it afterwards. I would highly recommend seeing this production.