Cassandra Kipp

Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy dramatically reenacts the first case undertaken by real figure Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson is a black Harvard-graduate lawyer who moves to Alabama to achieve justice for death row inmates. His new Equal Justice Initiative homes in on Walter McMillian, a black man under the death penalty following the decade-prior wrongful accusation he killed a white woman. McMillian and his family have lost hope, but Stevenson’s free service and persistence returns their drive. Probing deeper into the case reveals definitive evidence Stevenson’s client was a victim of corruption, but courts refuse to listen even when Ralph Myers, whose torture-coerced testimony incriminated McMillian, rescinds his account. After many defeats, a higher court finally declares McMillian innocent. While historical, the film focuses on the ongoing social problems it uncovers. Stevenson fights poverty, racism, dehumanization, and corruption through hope, community, and faith–but he can’t fix the system alone. Stevenson’s EJI goes on to free other death row inmates, but the structural problems the film has uncovered remain. Can a social problem film avoid the sense that all is said and done on the topic?

The film is visually and auditorily sparing, aiming for an undiluted image of its subjects, but what is present reveals a need for actively pursued change. Blues, gospel, and spiritual music repeats through the film. Powerful music associated with African American culture and Christian religion is omnipresent in moments of brutality or despair. Stevenson’s client Herbert requests the hymn “Old Rugged Cross” during his execution, its lyrics depicting the relationship between suffering and survival, implicitly conveying his faith and pain. When Stevenson fails to get McMillian a re-trial, he visits a community church, where watching people sing hymns rejuvenates his hope. Connecting Stevenson’s faith with this drive highlights black resistance and community in the face of injustice. While simple faith can’t fix the problem, it can incentivize efforts. Visually, environments in the film are white, geometric, and orderly, suggesting the racial control enforced upon these inmates as well as the obscurity and back-grounding of these problems in the white eye. Willful ignorance and structural problems are thus highlighted. More critique of the status quo comes through its sympathetic and humanizing focus on Stevenson and his death row clients. Myers, who incriminated McMillian, has his side of the story explained but not justified, as he was psychologically tortured; Herbert, who killed a woman, is mentally ill and terrified. The critique lies in how systemic racism and mass incarceration constantly manipulate complicated people.

Sympathy and power is generated through a focus on headshots, reactions, and thinking shots. Documentary styles, including shallow depth of field, emotional and intimate close-ups, and realistic mise-en-scène and lighting target and challenge the audience. The call to action frames Just Mercy, showing racist acts and their brutality without pulling away. This is at the expense of women’s narratives. Minnie, McMillian’s wife, must stand by her husband despite knowing he cheated on her. She is given complexity through her desire to stand by him due to the injustice and her children, but this betrayal weighs on her. Minnie’s plight, while bought up, receives no focus, ultimately reinforcing the idea of “standing by your man.” Eva, Stevenson’s coworker with EJI, is a white woman who uses her whiteness to help Stevenson; meanwhile Ronda, the woman McMillian is convicted for killing, has her whiteness used against McMillian post-mortem. White womanhood, therefore, is conveyed with more power and influence than black womanhood. This real-life intersectional oppression is conveyed, though not interrogated. While likely the lack of gender-based nuance is due to time constraints on an already two-hour film, it structurally reinforces gender ideology where women are sidelined.

Cretton was inspired to be involved in a complex human network of change by Stevenson’s memoir. He sought to inspire other people the same way through his screen adaptation. Such adaptation is a complex issue, potentially attempting to tell someone else’s story for self-aggrandizement, but Stevenson’s story is something important for an unaware society to hear. Criticizing how the prison system is self-reinforcing, an endless cycle of suffering that focuses its violence on systematically broken-down people, Just Mercy fits with the social problem tradition while disrupting the cultural conception of punishment. No one, the film immediately says, is deserving of incarceration, let alone death row: this is socially revolutionary. Unfortunately, what can an average person do? Likely, feel self-satisfaction at their righteous outrage in the emotional swell over what Just Mercy conveys, and continue on with their prior beliefs.

Just Mercy. Directed by Destin Cretton. Warner Bros., 2019.

Koseluk, Chris. “Director Destin Daniel Cretton on Adapting Bryan’s Stevenson’s Just Mercy.” The Credits, 2020. https://www.motionpictures.org/2020/01/director-destin-daniel-cretton-on-adapting-bryans-stevensons-just-mercy/.