Author: Cameron Fairchild
Header photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox
The question “How are you going to make money?” is asked several times throughout Widows, and in Steve McQueen’s latest film, there are no good answers to that question. At its core, Widows isn’t a mere prestige crime potboiler about grieving women so much as it is a thorough and eagerly overstuffed examination of what it means to inherit exploitative systems put in place by powerful men.
Those inheritors – the eponymous widows played by Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and a stand-out Elizabeth Debicki – quickly find that their deceased criminal husbands’ unfinished business has become theirs, and it comes in the form of Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), a crime boss and aspiring politician owed an unpaid debt, and his enforcer brother Jatemme (a truly terrifying Daniel Kaluuya). Meanwhile, Jamal’s political competition forms the major subplot of the film: a race for precinct alderman against front-runner Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), a shoo-in thanks to the power of his incumbent father (Robert Duvall). Liam Neeson also joins the cast as the widower of Davis’ character.
Widows is at its best when it concerns itself directly with the grief of the women left behind, and the circumstances that complicate their grief. The film is radically uninterested in avenging the men whose deaths open the film (Neeson, Jon Bernthal, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Coburn Goss). These men are far from saints, and their complicated relationships with their wives largely plays out posthumously within each actress’ performance. All the things their husbands did, kept from them, and left them with, are reckoned with through nuanced character expression and through the heist plot as the widows try to clean up the mess they’re saddled with. When the film hones in on Davis, Rodriguez, and Debicki, it gives each the space to realistically evaluate their husbands’ actions even as they emulate them. The performances are emotionally authentic, and the characters never feel too overwhelmed by the film’s myriad points of focus.
McQueen’s focus certainly does wander frequently from his protagonists, a flaw that at times stretches the film’s setting and warring plotlines a bit too thin. Still, the strength of the performances from the entire cast and the sprawling nature of its world allows Widows to always feel kinetic. The web of capitalism and patriarchy that surrounds its protagonists, it argues with each new detour, is far more pervasive than can perhaps be immediately recognized. Widows is not necessarily a nihilistic film, but it does at times revel in the immediate brutality and discomfort that capitalism creates- often through the character Jatemme, a nihilist himself who takes pervasive glee in harming others. Kaluuya completely flips his wide-eyed performance in Get Out to embody the film’s most terrifying character, all quiet contemplation and simmering menace. McQueen, probably most famous for helming 12 Years a Slave, is no stranger to exploring brutality and the commodification of bodies, and Widows demonstrates that experience, not content to let its action-film veneer obfuscate the reality that underpins the film’s driving narrative.
Ambition and confident delivery assure that Widows is ultimately more than the sum of its parts. There are so many ideas, tones, and characters on display that Widows becomes an enormous tapestry, asking questions without providing any easy answers. The possibilities it raises and the harsh truths it expounds upon cement Widows as an uncommonly thoughtful action movie and a pointed commentary on the legacy of capitalism.
CAMERON FAIRCHILD | Capitalist Heteropatriarch | KXSU Arts Reporter