December 12, 2022 Issue

This week’s issue contains an excellent Richard Brody capsule review of Janicza Bravo’s brilliant Zola (2021). Brody refers to the movie’s “exquisite stylization.” For a detailed description of that stylization, check out Namwali Serpell’s “ ‘She’s Capital!’ ” (The New York Review of Books, July 21, 2022). Serpell writes,

Zola is at its best when it lets this archetypal plot lie and plays with its filmic form instead. Its aesthetic, like other films produced by A24, has an air of gentrified graffiti, a palette like a neon bruise. But Bravo beautifully contains the sun-shot pastels of Florida in the manner of a David Hockney painting, and the film deftly references its origins on social media. With a camera-shutter sound, the screen freezes into a snapshot that shrinks into a corner, like on an iPhone; with a cha-ching of change, hearts flash or rise up the screen, like in an Instagram Live; with clickety-clicks and emoji bursts, texts are typed into being; the date and time appear at the top of the screen in a thin white font, then vanish—both with a click; and we occasionally hear the Twitter whistle, as the screenplay explains, “to pay homage when a line in the script is identical to one of @_zolarmoon’s tweets.”

That “palette like a neon bruise” is inspired! The whole piece is inspired! Serpell’s “ ‘She’s Capital!’ ” is my choice for best critical essay of 2022.