Swing Lowe Sweet Chariote
Writer-director David C. Snyder (whom I’ve previously reviewed “The Quiet Arrangement” and “Dark of Winter” for) adapts a novel by Cleveland author Stella Hall that tells a gritty coming-of-age story on the streets. Snyder has proven himself adept at character-driven crime cinema, and this time, he adds a splash of urban style a la “Menace II Society” mixed with old-school blaxploitation movies that makes this quite a journey to watch.
Exploitation is hardly on Snyder’s mind, however. He’s genuinely sympathetic to the plights that come at Chariote Lowe, the main character played with effortless warmth and wit by Phillia Thomas. She’s a high school senior on the cusp of graduation, and while she’s smart enough for a bright future, she’s not far from the streets, and the film follows her walking that fine line. Her mother is a streetwalker, while Chariote’s dad is a pimp– her mother’s pimp, no less. She’s been raised by her Christian grandmother, who wants Chariote to have a better life than her mother has, and things seem to be headed that way. However, on the eve of graduation, Chariote sees one of her friend’s shot and killed, and once she starts hooking up with a low-level dealer called Ace (Hakeem Sharif), things start to spiral out of control, and she becomes entrenched in the criminal life. Death isn’t quite a shock with her, and the young woman her grandmother raised seems distant. Can she right the patterns in her life before going off to college, and a better life? The fact that the first thing we see is her bleeding out on the kitchen floor, it’s hard to be optimistic about such things.
One of the things that really pops about Snyder’s latest film is the soundtrack. There’s a lot of hip-hop and R&B on this audio track, including some original tracks by Public Enemy, no less, and can I just say, damn. It’s not always easy for song compilation soundtrack to work, mainly because most of them seem put together for the sole purpose of selling records rather than helping tell the story, but that is not the case here. Snyder and his collaborators are looking to paint a musical portrait of Chariote’s life, and how she seems to get sidetracked from the life that matches the way Snyder, as not just the screenwriter but also cinematographer and editor, tells the story. This is one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard all year, and it’s one of those frustrating times where you wish more people could experience a film so that they could understand where you’re coming from when it comes to the music. If you’ve heard any Public Enemy in the past, though, and know just what a huge name in music that is (after all, their “Fight the Power” was a key song in “Do the Right Thing,” for crying out loud), you know they wouldn’t lend their name to just any project, though; it would have to mean something.
And Snyder makes this film mean something. On the surface, it may look like any number of crime films and urban dramas, but there’s a pain underneath the surface that’s palpable, and makes Chariote’s struggles universal. Not everyone has to deal with what she does, and not everyone is coming from where she’s coming from in terms of her personal experiences, but even if we don’t agree with all of her choices, we understand them in the context of her story, and in her process of growing up. And by the end, it’s obvious there’s more to tell before we see her bleeding on that kitchen floor. Hopefully, Snyder and Thomas, in a breakout performance, are able to tell us how she gets there one day.
