Lovers Rock - Steve McQueen Throws the Best Party of the Pandemic

What a surprise that this year’s funnest, most head bobbing, toe tapping, get out of your seat and start dancing film would be directed by Hunger, Shame, and 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen. McQueen is one of the most daring and impressive directors of modern cinema, but the Oscar winner’s filmography is anything but cheerful, life affirming, or any other adjective that can be used to describe the TV film Lovers Rock. McQueen is a master of portraying horrifying physical violence and pain as is seen in Michael Fassbender’s skeletal, meatlessly thin body as Bobby Sands in the film about the IRA member who leads a hunger strike while in prison in Hunger, or in Lupita Nyong'o's thrashed open bloody back as she is brutally whipped by her demonic slave owner in 12 Years a Slave. McQueen does not simply portray violence so the audience ‘gets an idea’ of what it was like, but he unflinchingly replicates it with a steady camera that forces his audience to take it in. Yet in Lovers Rock, McQueen’s steady long takes relay an entirely different set of ideas and emotions to the audience.

McQueen stands out among his contemporaries for his honest, masterful depiction of suffering that most directors either shy away from or glorify. In a time where the average length of a shot lasts barefly a few seconds for fear of losing the audience’s attention, McQueen is not afraid to hold a shot. Quite the contrary, the key to McQueen’s cinema lies in his long takes. The audience does not simply see Chiwetel Ejiofor’s limp body hang dangerously from a noose in 12 Years a Slave. Due to the length of the shot, the audience is forced to bear witness to the act during what seems like an eternity in such a way that gives the sensation that we ourselves have a rope around our necks. There is no montage to generate suspense. We are just left to helplessly watch him from a distance as he breathlessly struggles to maintain balance, stretching his toes as far as they can to keep himself from suffocating.

Amazingly, McQueen uses a very similar style to film Lovers Rock. What changes is not the aesthetic, but the content. As our protagonists, two recently introduced lovers, move their bodies sensually back and fro, rubbing their waists and torsos against each other, it can feel as if we are interrupting something intimate and private that perhaps we should not be seeing. This Peeping Tom-like feeling is also felt in Shame, a film that depicts a different type of suffering, that of a sex addict. In one of the film’s most humiliating scenes we see our protagonist, again played by Fassbender, take a coworker up to his room with him. In one shot that goes on for several minutes we watch as they make out, take off their clothes and try to have sex. Yet, since he sees her as a person, something more than a sexual object, he is unable to perform and forces her to leave. A scene like this is meant to be uncomfortable, but watching it take place in one take in real time makes the audience feel a horribly awkward and embarrassed sensation for having watched it. 

In Lovers Rock we may again feel like what we are watching is a bit too close for comfort, but in the end, what we are seeing is a straight forward depiction of something that is anything but humiliating. It is sexy and beautiful, and something nearly all of us have done: shamelessly, lustingly share a dance with an almost perfect stranger in a moment of ecstasy. This time the scene is so hot and bursting with youth, life, sex, and song that instead of feeling uncomfortable for watching, the irresistible chemistry between camera, actors, and music makes it impossible to look away.

Lover’s Rock is one of the 5 films that make up McQueen’s 5 part BBC miniseries, Small Axe. The series is composed of 5 interlocking stories about black West Indian immigrants in London between the 1960s and 1980s. The other 4 films are more in line with the themes of injustice, racism, and suffering seen in his previous films, yet they are more accessible for a larger audience. It is clear that one of the main objectives McQueen and the BBC had with this series was to capture a moment in history that is all but absent from cinema and television. Watching the series is like opening a portal to a time and a people that history had almost forgotten, and what a pleasure it is to see McQueen given free reign to depict these stories in his way for generations to come. 

While the other four films feel more educational, the last one is even titled Education, to inform a modern audience of the trials, tribulations, camaraderie, and culture of this immigrant population, Lovers Rock stands out in several ways. For one, as previously mentioned, it is head and shoulders the least infuriating and depressing film in McQueen’s oeuvre, and secondly, it is the only film that is essentially plotless. The film it most reminded me of was Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. Like Dazed and Confused, the film is essentially a party film about one night in a select group of young people’s lives. Only this time instead of taking place in Texas of the 1970s it is set at a birthday reggae house party in an immigrant neighborhood in London. 

Like Dazed and Confused the film features an array of fascinating characters who, for as brief as their screen time may be, are so well construed that they must be real people who McQueen kidnapped using a time machine: The tall, brawny, big eyed, dreadlock donning, tall hat wearing door man who goes from inviting to intimidating in the blink of an eye, the happy, chubby, tireless DJ constantly plugging his company, Beef Patty, the unfortunate friend of the star of the film, the birthday girl still not sure of what she really wants, the red beanie wearing cousin who bounces in the door full or rage, energy, and the need to dance, and the overly confident sexually violent guy who thinks he is irresistible. We bump into these characters and other party goers throughout the film as it takes us through all the motions of the party, from the removing of furniture and the setting up of the sound system and dance floor, to cooking the food that will be on sale later that night, to the arrival of the guests who pay entry at the door, to the girls dancing together to Kung Fu Fighting, to the moments of Lovers Rock where the couples pair up, to the end of the night were the drunk and drugged men full of pent up testosterone who are left partnerless drink and smoke more and dance their sexual energy out between themselves. 

The film’s protagonists who guide us through the comings and goings of the night are Franklyn (Micheal Ward), a sexy, kind, smooth talking young working man, and Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn), a sweet, no nonsense girl who has to sneak out from her family home and then rush back in the early morning hours to catch church. Franklyn woos Martha this fateful night and their connection is sealed in the aforementioned supersensual dance scene where they and the other lovers rock against each other on the dance floor to Janet Kay’s Silly Games, a song that I will now never forget nor stop listening to, in one of the greatest movie music moments of all time. As the song ends the DJ cuts the sound and the dancers continue singing, screaming, screeching, full blast in an unforgettable moment of acapella for another 2 minutes. The scene goes on for at least 5 minutes, and it is pure and utter joy, one of those moments where the magic of cinema brings tears to your eyes because the mixture of images, movement, sound, and music come together to convince you that you are really sharing this moment with the characters on screen. The lie becomes a reality, the fictional portrayal becomes so tangible, so real, that you get so lost in it, that you begin to forget that you are not really there, that you are not dancing and singing in youthful exuberance. You are just in your house on the sofa.

I must say that after this year of curfews, quarantines, restrictions, and constant repression and stress that Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock was just the party my being had been aching for. I cannot thank him enough for giving me the party in my living room that I had been so desiring. His camera is so close that you can feel the bodies of strangers swaying beside you, sense the humidity dripping down the walls, smell the mixture of alcohol, sweat, smoke, and food that comes with any good party. I felt so stimulated and energised that it is a party that I returned to the next night with a friend who agreed to watch it after I would not shut up about it, and it is a party I look forward to attending again and again.

While plot is almost nonexistent, in its brief 68 minute run time there is enough time for love, heart break, family arguments, alcohol, marijuana, and lots and lots of dancing. Thematically the film brilliantly deals with racism, sexuality, class, gender roles, toxic masculinity, and generational conflict without ever being obvious or overblown. It is an outstanding film that has so much to say without any grandstanding or speeches. By simply showing us this world of young people from this neighborhood at this point of time, McQueen tells us so much without spelling anything out.

Audiences are so used to seeing historical films about the horrible atrocities committed against the black community in the past, films that McQueen himself has fearlessly brought to the screen, but it is refreshing to see that while the threat of violence always hung over the heads of these communities, that there were also many moments of happiness, where, among themselves, they could, perhaps, forget for a short while the dangers of the world outside. The party in Lover’s Rock is inspired by reggae house parties that were common among West Indies communities at the time, one of which became infamous for it’s disastrous ending. In an event known as the New Cross fire, racists started a fire during a birthday party celebration very similar to the one featured in Lovers Rock. The fire killed 13 black youths. Knowing this adds a pang of sorrow to the film. Looking at the smiling faces on screen, one can imagine the horrors that befell people just like them and left so many of them dead. Perhaps what McQueen does here is imagine how that party should have ended had a less cruel world existed. No one should have to worry about surviving a birthday party. The greatest dangers should be heartbreak and hangovers, but as we see again and again, even today, racism and racists put whole communities in danger no matter where they are or what they do.

As Franklyn and Martha leave the party the film ends with a bicycle ride home during sunrise in a shot that captures the elation of our young lovers. Shot in a tracking shot looking up at their beaming smiling faces as the tree branches and colorful morning sky stream past, they seem to be flying through space on a magic carpet rather than a bicycle. Franklyn gives Martha a telephone number she can reach him at in a time where mobile phones didn’t exist and keeping contact was infinitely more difficult, and she rushes home. 

Will they meet again? Will she call Franklyn? All that really matters is the magical night they spent together, and the fact that Steve McQueen was there to record it and share it with the world in a film that portrays the emotions and desires of youth that the whole world can identify with and pairs it with a specific community in London and a whole set of societal challenges that they faced that many cannot identify with. McQueen’s film that seems to be about nothing may be the most meaningful film he has ever made, and that’s saying something. McQueen replaces physical torment with ecstatic joy and it suits him just as well or even better.