Sinners is a once-in-a-generation film. Recently, Miles Caton, who played “Sammie Moore,” shared a video of himself going to his audition. After landing the role, he went on to embody Sammie well while gaining traction for his music. He not only sang throughout the movie, but he also teamed up with the legendary Buddy Guy for a Tiny Desk Concert.
That is Sinners’ impact. It introduced a rising star, Caton, while reintroducing us to stars like Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Li Jun Li, and Wunmi Mosaku. Additionally, the screen was graced with veteran actors Delroy Lindo, Michael B. Jordan, and Hailee Steinfeld. When promoting the movie, director Ryan Coogler revealed that Steinfeld’s heritage aligned with her character, Mary.
Another impactful moment during the promo tour was the showing in Clarksdale, Mississippi. This town, in which the movie was set, does not have a theater, so Coogler scheduled free showings to bring the movie back into the community it spotlighted. Blues music, a central theme of Sinners, was born in Mississippi, so this setting was intentional. Yet, Coogler also showed his intentionality in other ways.
Leading up to the highly anticipated release, he showed some of the camerawork that went into making Sinners. According to Peta Pixel, it was the first of its kind to be shot simultaneously on Panavision 70 and IMAX. To bring cinema fans deeper into his filmmaking, he showed how each shot was differentiated between the different cameras. Coogler also released early camera tests for things such as hair, makeup, costumes, and chemistry.
These small details made the movie feel intimate. We were physically brought deeper into Smoke and Stack’s perspective by use of the aspect ratio. As a director, Coogler has never shied away from what he did with Sinners: telling Black stories with surrealist elements. He is best known for his role in the Black Panther franchise, which was one of several collaborations with Michael B. Jordan.
Since Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan have formed a professional brotherhood. They have collaborated on multiple films since Coogler’s 2013 debut. This includes both Black Panther movies, Creed I and Creed II, and then Sinners. Five films in, they both received Oscars on the same night. That win was historic, deserved, and unsurprising because it was a long time coming.
Really, Sinners was a culmination of Coogler’s storytelling; it showed how realism could meet surrealism. Fruitvale Station and his other films planted seeds for what he would eventually do with Sinners. Namely, he took a harrowing reality and transformed it into beautiful cinematography. Although pessimists will laud Sinners for not centering Black trauma, racism was a prominent theme in the movie. Whether it was the brief mentions of the Ku Klux Klan or the explicit depictions on how race functioned in 1930s Mississippi, racism was a subplot of the movie. At the end, Smoke has to fend off racist KKK members who hoped to harass him and his friends at the Juke Joint in the morning.
So, as much as people would like to distance themselves from trauma stories, they are part of the Black experience. Moreover, Coogler did something other directors often miss: he told the whole story. Some complained about the slow buildup between the opening and the action scenes, but this lengthy exposition reduced some of the gore and centralized what this was really about: singing the Blues.
Midway through the movie, Coogler montages Black music and dance from the historic Blues to modern Hip Hop. Then, at the Oscars, Misty Copeland unretired herself so she could participate in the reenactment of this scene. This was yet another detail that contributed to the overall perception of Sinners.
It was a beautiful, holistic depiction of Black life then and now. Alas, there is a saying that says art imitates life. While on a historic award run, Sinners actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were victims of a racist incident. During the BAFTA awards in the UK, the two were presenting an award when they were hit with a racial slur; this slur came from someone who has Tourette’s syndrome, so some argued that he did not need to apologize because it’s a tic. Others noted that it is still a racial slur that carries pain.
Yet, Jordan and Lindo were not alone in the awards-season racism. Wunmi Mosaku, who played Annie alongside Jordan, was depicted in a cartoonish way for the cover of The New Yorker.
When her magazine feature dropped, many criticized The New Yorker for not putting more into their depiction of a Black woman. On Twitter, one user recreated the image in a way that she felt was more appropriate. This goes to show that racism cannot be escaped. This was a lesson Sammie learned onscreen, and audiences are now learning offscreen.
Sinners was more than a cultural moment; it was a cultural marker. It was an indication that there is still much work to be done. It parallels the impact of yet another Coogler classic: Black Panther. Shortly after his success, Coogler was racially profiled while trying to film the second installment in the series. This reminded us that we can climb to great heights and still fall victim to racism on account of being Black. In a way, Sinners was transgressive. It was both a refresher from our lived experience and a brutal reminder of it. The balance that Coogler and his
cast found in depicting that and then, in turn, navigating that is remarkable. They used the movie to meet every challenge placed in front of them with grace and poise.
In many ways, Sinners is a cautionary tale with a twist.
It tells viewers that it’s up to us to pioneer our own futures, which I plan to do in my written work and activism work. If you love Black politics, Black futurism, Black stories, and Black people, check out my fourth novel, Chaos and Magic – available now on Amazon.
Chaos and Magic 
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