Barbican Outdoor Cinema
Dee Rees’s seminal 2011 queer drama finds an appropriately urban background within the Barbican’s brutalist amphitheatre in this summers 9th outdoor cinema experience.
But what a film, one of the only selected from the 2010s for the United States National Film Registry. Winner of so many awards my fingers would tire midway through typing them all out. An outstanding jumping off point for writer and director Rees who went on to other hits such as Bessie (2015), Mudbound (2017), and The Last Thing He Wanted (2020). Not a cult classic but a classic classic only growing in popularity as time slowly unwinds away from it’s birth.
Despite flip phones nothing about Pariah feels dated. This is down to the deeply authentic writing and performances. People miss-hear each other, mumble, misconstrue, and bicker in just the way you and I, the dull flesh sacks of reality do. Scenes are shot between fingers, over shoulders focusing on detail instead of the perfect facial close ups, allowing for a direct line of connection.
Secondly we can thank the characters lovingly crafted by the small cast. Struggling with reality, sexuality, racism, and the battle to achieve the perfect first kiss (as we all know an impossible task but still). Adepero Oduye as Alike (Lee) drew praise rightfully back in the 10s, and her performance brims with teenage confidence, doubt, and a refreshingly wise beyond her years approach to her family’s difficulties with her queerness. The most dynamic scenes are between her and her disappointed, church going mother Kim Wayans: hair always perfect, nails always done, life falling apart underneath the clenched table cloth. Lees exploration of a lesbian bar and heartwarming connection with old friend (gay-sensei) played with gusto by Pernell Walker and fumbling romance with family friend (Aasha Davis) grate against the tomboy/daddy’s girl rugged tenderness between her and her father a gritty Charles Parnell.
Lee (and therefore writer Rees’s) poetry pepper the script, the heights and ruckus of Brooklyn helped by the sirens, racing overhead planes and shrieks of its current Central London setting. The world presented is painfully real, neither a worst case scenario of coming out to your parents, nor the best, a compromise so beguiling its hard to believe it doesn’t trundle along after the inflatable screen is packed into its special box. A timeless, quietly important discussion of youth, love, and the city as Lee gazes out into the greyhounds mucky windows on route too…..(no spoilers) we hear “I’m not running, I’m choosing”. I mean what 17 year old utters such weighty pronouncements? I can assure you I certainly didn’t. But Rees and Oduye never allow us to stray into hyper-poeticism, always on track for reality and then some.
The selection of films for this years outdoor season has ranged from Studio Ghibli, to recorded concerts of the one and only Icelandic alien Björk. Coming up (and not to be missed) is Kamal Amrohi’s exotic melodrama Pakeezah, blur: Live at Wembley Stadium and finally swishing into the finale An American in Paris so the choice really is yours.
Sat snuggled in my scarf (I very thankfully brought, grumble grumble rubbish summer) and trying not to be too nettled after paying £9.5 for a average looking hotdog, I thank the heavens for the warm night, the Barbican for the foresight in taking us out under the stars and Pariah for showing us some many glinting orbs much much closer to earth.
Grab you tickets now, click here! What are you waiting for?!
