{"id":2452947,"date":"2020-01-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=318726"},"modified":"2020-01-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T07:00:00","slug":"aspen-film-academy-screenings-destin-daniel-crettons-just-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-film-academy-screenings-destin-daniel-crettons-just-mercy\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Film Academy Screenings: Destin Daniel Cretton\u2019s \u2018Just Mercy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In these fraught times, we sorely need stories with real-life heroes. \u201cJust Mercy\u201d<\/a> is such a tale. Much more than a social justice thriller, Destin Daniel Cretton\u2019s<\/a> (\u201cThe Glass Castle\u201d) new feature offers a galvanizing portrait of hope and its transformative power to effect change for good. This inspiring drama, starring Michael B. Jordan, is based on Bryan Stevenson\u2019s best-selling memoir, \u201cJust Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1988, fresh from Harvard Law School, Stevenson moved to Alabama to establish the Equal Justice Initiative. For more than 30 years, he and his EJI colleagues have fought on behalf of the wrongly incarcerated, including those condemned to Holman Prison\u2019s notorious death row. \u201cJust Mercy\u201d focuses on the young lawyer\u2019s service to the truth, including his first landmark case, that of Walter McMillian, a man condemned to death for a crime he didn\u2019t commit.<\/p>\n

German director Wim Winders once referred to movies as \u201cemotion pictures,\u201d a play on \u201cmotion pictures.\u201d Cretton\u2019s particular gift as a filmmaker is to create \u201cempathy pictures.\u201d His ability to not just show the emotions of his characters but to help audiences understand and share in their feelings is impressively on display in this film as Cretton and his uniformly superb cast bring Stevenson\u2019s vision and work to riveting life. Key to the director\u2019s method is his rapport with actors.<\/p>\n

Last spring, Cretton took a break from editing to talk a bit about this film and his process. He explained how \u201cbeing on set with the actors is typically my favorite part. \u2026 It\u2019s so magical to watch a human tap into such a depth of empathy that they are literally inhabiting the psyche of another person. To be 3 feet away from an actor as he or she does that is really moving and so powerful to witness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking the lead are Jordan (\u201cBlack Panther,\u201d the \u201cCreed\u201d films) as the determined Stevenson and Jamie Foxx (\u201cRay,\u201d \u201cDjango Unchained\u201d) in a career-best performance as Walter McMillian, a man nearly crushed by a system so egregiously rigged that \u201cyou\u2019re guilty from the day you\u2019re born.\u201d The cast also features Brie Larson (\u201cRoom\u201d) as Eva, Stevenson\u2019s local ally and EJI colleague, Rob Morgan (\u201cMudbound\u201d) and O\u2019Shea Jackson, Jr. (\u201cStraight Outta Compton\u201d) as fellow death row inmates, and a memorable Tim Blake Nelson (\u201cWatchmen\u201d) in a wrenching performance as a life-scarred inmate whose testimony is pivotal to McMillian\u2019s future. Additionally, there is a montage of prisoners who share their legal troubles, including four who were actual inmates Stevenson helped free.<\/p>\n

Acquiring the movie rights before the book\u2019s publication, producer Gil Netter shared \u201cJust Mercy\u201d with Cretton, believing he was the right choice to direct. The filmmaker explained what drew him to the project: \u201cWhen I read Bryan\u2019s book, it changed me. \u2026 It made me want to do something. Bryan has quickly become one of my heroes. He\u2019s a human I respect more than anyone I\u2019ve ever met. He leads by example, and he does it all out of kindness and love.<\/p>\n

\u201cBryan has been doing work that could easily paralyze a person with pessimism and jadedness. He has chosen to somehow not trudge through this work, but really charge through it with hope and inspiration. And so much optimism, it\u2019s crazy how optimistic he is. It\u2019s not like he takes these issues lightly; he\u2019s very aware of how dark things get. But when you go to Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, you don\u2019t see stressed-out lawyers, you see people who have a lightness to them because they know what they\u2019re working for really matters. That\u2019s very inspiring to be around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout production, Stevenson proved an invaluable, generous resource for the \u201cJust Mercy\u201d team who were determined to \u201cstay true to Bryan\u2019s voice and message.\u201d In adapting the New York Times bestseller, Cretton and co-writer Andrew Lanham shared each draft of the script with him for accuracy and feedback. Likewise, cast and crew consulted with the lawyer-activist on every aspect from costume design (how would he dress for court?) to performance (how would he approach the bench?).<\/p>\n

Did they get it right? At its Toronto International Film Festival premiere<\/a> in September, an audience of 1,000 gave the film an eight-minute standing ovation. During the Q&A that followed, Stevenson was asked for his reaction: \u201cEmotional. All of these amazing, talented people gave not just performances, they gave their hearts to this story. \u2026 We have been governed by fear and anger in too many places in the world and we\u2019ve got to fight against that. We\u2019ve got to find ways to revive hope, revive justice, revive love for human beings. We can\u2019t do it when we just throw people away. I think it becomes easier when you get the full picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to dismiss a woefully broken criminal justice system as a geographic anomaly or someone else\u2019s problem. But as \u201cJust Mercy\u201d illustrates, the long road to justice always starts close to home, locally, in one\u2019s community. In Colorado, where 5% of the population is black, the three men currently sitting on death row are all African American, only one with a stay of execution. Additional death penalty cases are pending. According to a 2015 University of Denver Law School study, prosecutors \u201cwere more likely to seek the death penalty against minority defendants than against white defendants.\u201d Of the state\u2019s 22 capital cases tried from 1999 to 2010, the research found only two were against white defendants.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Collider, Karan Kendrick, the actress who plays Walter McMillian\u2019s wife Minnie, observed, \u201cAs a country, I feel like our humanity is on trial.\u201d At the premiere, sharing a personal experience that came out of making the film, she reflected, \u201cThis work changed me. \u2026 (It) forced me to realize that no one can do everything, although I feel that Bryan Stevenson is close. But everyone can do something. It forced me to ask and answer the question: What is my something?\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In these fraught times, we sorely need stories with real-life heroes. \u201cJust Mercy\u201d is such a tale. Much more than a social justice thriller, Destin Daniel Cretton\u2019s (\u201cThe Glass Castle\u201d) new feature offers a galvanizing portrait of hope and its transformative power to effect change for good. This inspiring drama, starring Michael B. Jordan, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 22:15:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2452947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}