Directed by: Justin Simien
Starring: Tessa Thompson, Dennis Haysbert, Tyler James Williamson
Release Date: e
Dear White People is placed at fictional Ivy League Winchester University. It’s filled with white, upper middle class students, with a small but vocal group of black students. The loudest of them all is Sam White (a composed, mesmerizing Tessa Thompson). Her radio show “Dear White People” is the voice of WU’s black students. She leads the Black Student Union. She’s self-published “Ebony and Ivy”, a young black person’s guide to living in a white person’s world and is unexpectedly elected president of her house, the all-black Armstrong/Parker. She ousts the lighter-skinned, white-pandering incumbent Troy Fairbanks (her ex). She’s a blunt, eloquent rouser.
Dear White People is addressed accordingly. Through Sam, Simien imposes knowledge of what it means to be black in a passively racist white university. But he does so with the Queen’s English. It’s easier for white people to understand. But the movie doesn’t magnify the black experience for white people. He’s masterfully portraying how blacks are forced to communicate with whites on their turf. If they have to speak the proper English in order to be heard, he makes it clear why.
At its worst Dear White People paces like the college vignettes of MTV’s yore. But Simien makes it work with a smart script and actors with up-and-coming potential. Eyes are on Tessa Thompson.
You can see influences of Spike Lee, yes. DWP‘s message and speech are carbon copies of Lee’s early career. You also see flourishes of color auteur Wes Anderson and conversationalist Richard Linklater. Simien melts various influences into a cogent, loud-and-clear movie that needs making in our society. He does it with humor, anger, and a big heart. It’s one of the most challenging, urgent films of 2014.
