Not a documentary and not quite a biopic, Yashaddai Owens' brief, exploratory debut feature feels in touch with its subject despite its oblique approach.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
Courtesy of Strand Releasing “If not me, who?” said actor Billy Porter in a 2024 Guardian interview, explaining the rationale for his plan to direct and star in a biopic of Black queer author and activist James Baldwin. “Who’s going to tell it better than the Black gay man who embodies that in today’s age?” Porter was right that the movie industry has been unduly slow to engage with Baldwin as a subject and source, relative to white authors of equivalent renown; one presumes, however, that he didn’t know “Jimmy” would premiere later that year. The directorial debut of photographer Yashaddai Owens is no star vehicle, and is only glancingly a character study. Its depiction of Baldwin is shimmery and largely silent, alternating between ambient portraiture and first-person perspective, yet it feels keyed into his experience of the world in a way a more completely (and conventionally) dramatized film might not.
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