LIFE SENTENCE (CLEMENCY)

 

When the end of year critics' lists appear this month on this side of the Atlantic, surely Alfre Woodard's name will figure prominently when they talk about 2020's best performances? 

One of American film and television's consistently strong actors, Woodard delivers a performance of such depth and control in 'Clemency' as a troubled prison warden that it deserves a deluge of awards.

As we head into what would normally have been the start of another awards season, it remains a mystery why her performance in this film was denied a place on the 2020 Best Actress Oscars shortlist.

To ignore a performance of such profundity, control and class simply illustrates just how random and ridiculous awards season is.

It is all the more baffling, given that death row dramas have tended to appeal to the voters who decide awards.

Films about prisoners facing execution thrive on heightened emotion and they offer actors plenty of scene chewing scenes, making them an irresistible draw.

With Donald Trump using federal execution powers at a disturbing rate in the dying days of his Presidency, films like Destin Daniel Cretton's 'Just Mercy' offer withering examinations of a justice system that is all too anxious to wield the death penalty as a deterrent but also has a tendency to overlook doubts about the convictions behind them. 

Executions make for powerful, stagey dramas but they rarely disappoint - even when they are following a set formula.

Nigerian-American director Chinonye Chukwu's indie drama 'Clemency' doesn't follow that formula and offers a refreshing take on the death row genre.

What sets it apart is how it examines the toll executions exact on everyone involved, from the inmate to the lawyer to the chaplain and the prison staff.

At the start of Chukwu's movie, which picked up the Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, an execution goes horribly wrong.

Woodard's warden Bernadine Williams is overseeing the lethal injection of Alex Castillo's inmate Victor Jimenez.

During the prisoner's last moments, a medical officer struggles to find a suitable vein on the prisoner and everyone starts to panic.

Bernadine authorises the use of the femoral vein near the prisoner's knee but she is forced to suddenly draw the veil on the viewing gallery as the execution goes awry.

Jimenez's death is the first execution to go wrong on her watch and it casts a huge spectre over the rest of the film.

For the remainder of Chukwu's movie, it feels like Bernadine is the prisoner.

She's hitched to an unpalatable job that is hollowing her out and making her hide behind procedural catchphrases.

Behind the detached professional exterior is a haunted woman, struggling to come to terms with all the deaths that she has overseen on her watch.

The prospect of another scheduled execution, with Aldis Hodges' Anthony Woods the next lined up scares her - especially as there are doubts about his conviction.

In this morass, Richard Schiff's jaded lawyer Marty Lumetta fights one more time before he retires.

It is a desperate bid to secure clemency from the state Governor but he knows Anthony is facing an uphill battle.

Anthony's protestations of innocence and his initially meek acceptance of his fate rattles Bernadine who starts to drink after work.

At one point in the film, she has to be driven home by her deputy, Richard Gunn's Thomas Morgan after one particularly boozy session.

Her marriage to Wendell Pierce's high school teacher Jonathan is also suffering as he struggles to connect with her and help her deal with the emotional baggage of her job.

Jonathan's patience finally snaps after a fraught wedding anniversary dinner when she berates him for talking about retirement. 

Boiling over with frustration, he tells Bernadine she has become an "empty shell of a wife".

"I don't wanna be in fragments anymore," he says of their marriage. 

"I think you wanna be whole. Even if it is not with me, I think you wanna be whole. I want us to be whole again."

All of this sounds relentlessly gloomy but 'Clemency' is a tremendously engaging and rewarding film.

Woodard and the cast should take much credit for that but a lot is down to Chukwu's assured direction and her intelligent script.

Another vital ingredient is Eric Branco's cinematography which amplifies the sense throughout the film that Bernadine is not just imprisoned by her job but by the failings of a system that notches up executions no matter what doubts exist.

Early on, Bernadine is strikingly framed against a heavily barred doorway.

Other shots of her in the jail through iron bars raise questions among the viewet as to who really is the prisoner.

Chukwu and Branco imbue the film with the sensibility of a horror movie and so the film is peppered with moments when Bernadine is actually having nightmares.

Oscillating between scenes where she is required to be cool and detached and then full of bubbling gruef and rage, Woodard is simply magnificent in the anchor role, commanding our attention throughout.

She is surrounded by a cast that are also on top of their game.

Pierce is as warm and earnest as ever as a husband desperately fighting to save their marriage.

Gunn is effective as the colleague who knows he is trying to prop up a damaged soul.

Schiff deploys his trademark chippiness and intelligence to thrilling effect to the role of Lumetta.

Michael O'Neill is compassionate as the chaplain David Kendricks as he tries to console and reach the soul of Anthony and the other Death Row prisoners.

But if Woodard dominates the movie, the other actor who make a huge impression is Aldis Hodge.

Hodge delivers a performance of great heft as Anthony Woods, a man who protests his innocence against insurmountable odds, even when he has virtually no-one other than his lawyer on his side.

Some of the most affecting moments in the film come as Anthony, a sensitive soul with a 'Birdman of Alcatraz' style fixation with birds, battles with the realisation that the clock is running down on his life.

The film's most jaw dropping sequence is towards the end, as Chukwu and Branco's camera focuses solely on Bernadine as the execution unfolds around her.

It is a masterclass in screen acting that every aspiring film actor should study.

In a tight close up, Woodard's gaze and subtle facial expression tells us everything we need to know about Bernadine's state of mind.

It brilliantly replicates Hodges' powerful reaction earlier in the film as Anthony is informed that he is next in line to be executed.

And it makes a compelling case for Woodard to be recognised as American cinema's most underrated actor.

Woodard deserves to be given more substantial roles of this kind.

But the film also flags up Chukwu as a director of considerable skill who could well go on to have a stellar career. 

('Clemency' was released simultaneously in UK and Irish cinemas and screening services on July 17, 2020)