Surprise, Surprise — ‘Sinners’ Best Scene Has Nothing to do With Vampires
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Sinners.With rapturous lust, audiences and critics alike love Sinners, making it the most critically praised film of Ryan Coogler‘s career. This is especially gratifying for him, since he’s emphatically said this is not just his first “original” film, but the film closest to his heart that feels like a personal reflection of who he is as a human being. Maybe that’s why, of all the deliriously well-crafted moments in this vampire action epic, the true stand-out moment is one that has nothing to do with vampires, and everything to do with human connection. Get your lighters out and find your favorite mosh pit spot, because we’re talking about that musical performance by Sammie (Miles Caton) that visualizes all the film’s central themes into one stunning sequence.
What Happens In ‘The Surreal Montage’?
The night that twins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) open their Club Juke to great success, young Sammie is cajoled into giving a performance on his guitar. With some initial hesitation, he goes into “I Lied To You,” an emphatic stand against his father’s wish for Sammie to give up music in favor of a Christian life that should immediately be the #1 threat for Best Original Song at the Oscars next year. What starts as a simple acoustic ballad gradually elevates into a boisterous free-for-all where Sammie is accompanied by the ghosts of various musical figures, both past and present, each one representing different time periods and minority cultures.
We get a juicy gumbo of musical flavors, like a ’70s funk guitarist, a 1990s DJ, modern-day ballet, Chinese theater dancers, ancient African tribal dancers, and 1980s break-dancers. Better yet, this all unfurls in a staggering one-shot-take that seductively glides in and out of the crowd, a level of flex that we don’t often see anymore in films that are designated as blockbuster money-makers. But more than just a stylistic flourish, it speaks to the film’s core tenet of community and solidarity across generations with the magical power of music.
This Scene Visually Details the Film’s Main Message
Towards the beginning of the film, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), Smoke’s lover who practices voodoo magic, claims that certain people can make music so powerful that it can summon spirits from across time and “pierce the veil between life and death.” Sammie is continuously framed as somebody blessed with that ability, and his musical skills become a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s specifically his music that provides spiritual liberation to a group of people looking to survive and thrive in a cruel world, and each important character’s cultural background is reflected in at least one of the ghosts who join in the act.
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DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw digs into filming in IMAX on film and capturing Michael B. Jordan as twins.
While perhaps far-fetched as a visual gimmick for some, it’s a jaw-dropping metaphor for the interconnected tendrils that minority cultures weave to create greater bonds and how they intertwine and get historically passed down, remaining strong against the efforts of dominant cultures to scrub them away. On the other hand, Sammie’s performance is what catches the attention of Remmick (Jack O’Connell) and his vampire clan, thereby inadvertently causing the destruction and death of most of the people that Sammie loves. Like anything in life, art and cultural expression can be used for great beauty as well as great evil, a complication of the human condition that is central to Ryan Coogler’s exploration of how we’re all sinners and that’s okay. More than any other scene in the film, this bravura sequence gets directly to the heart of that conundrum.
The Scene Was Filled With Historical Layers of Importance
The secret MVP of not just this scene, but the whole film, is cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who became the first woman to shoot on 65mm film for a major feature film. She talked to Variety in vivid detail about all the different methods she and Coogler used to stitch five unique shots together, ranging from Steadicams and cranes to handheld shots and occasional VFX to smooth out transitions. Having never shot with IMAX cameras before, she talked to Oscar-winning IMAX expert Hoyte Van Hoytema before filming, who advised her, “Don’t let the fact that the format and the cameras are bigger than you’ve shot before, or feel like it’s cumbersome, shoot like you normally would.” She preferred to light from above so that she could “move the camera more freely” and used numerous source lights like lanterns and string lights to “help add to the authentic and moody lighting.”
She was aided by production designer Hannah Beachler, having a real full set built, which ensured that “there’s not a bunch of film gear around that [the actors] have to step over or walk around. These sets need to feel like real spaces.” Arkapaw was fundamentally aware and deeply appreciative of the magnitude of what they were making, noting that “there’s so many layers to that sequence — how we executed it, but also all the historical layers regarding ancestry, music, culture, and where our community was born from… It was fun to do, and ultimately it turned out really cool, because it means so much to a diverse group of people. That’s what makes it a good conversation piece.”
There’s been a lot of consternation recently about the success of Sinners and how much it actually “means” for the industry, with many paranoid executives convinced that it’s the beginning of the end. Given how flagrantly there seems to be a racist undertone to the reaction to Ryan Coogler’s success in comparison to various white filmmakers with similar success, the radical nature of a moment like the Club Juke sequence can’t be ignored. Studio people are often indoctrinated to have an irrational fear of letting intrepid creators actually do what they want to do, as if their proven track record of films means nothing. The empty handwringing has only amplified the power of Coogler’s biggest filmmaking swing yet, reminding us that the legacy he leaves behind will not be one that signals the death of anything, but instead the eternal evolution of the art form he thrives in.
