On “Sinners”
Proof of Life
Warning: Spoilers for Sinners ahead!
I remember when I saw Black Panther in the theaters. Released in 2018 and written and directed by Ryan Coogler, the film was more than superhero movie. It was a doorway into a world where we were free. Wakanda, the fictional world of Black Panther, is a place where Black innovation and ingenuity creates wealth for its people beyond—but inclusive of—monetary value. An Afrofuturist vision of what the world could be without racism, without oppression. A land that feels real, yet has always been out of reach.
Coogler, who hails from Oakland, California, is a virtuosic filmmaker, both a student of the past and an architect of the future. Fruitvale Station, his feature-length directorial debut, depicted the real-life events leading up to the murder of Oscar Grant, a young Black man killed by BART officers in Oakland in 2009. Followed by bigger and grander films—Creed and Black Panther—Coogler’s vision expanded from the tragic everyday to the blockbuster vistas of franchise films, tackling the Rocky universe and Marvel-verse.
Sinners, his 2025 Oscar-winning film starring Michael B. Jordan, feels like a coming home for Coogler, exhibiting a kind of intimacy that his blockbusters lacked due to their scope. Though the scope of Sinners is expansive, and its blend of genres electrifying, its gaze is that of a lover’s, a lover of people.
I kept procrastinating seeing Sinners. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I wasn’t sure I was up for it. I knew that it was set in the south in the ‘30s, which told me that it would not be a happy movie. And it is not. But it is a hopeful movie. It is a like-life movie, even with its supernatural elements. By visiting the past, Coogler fortifies us for the road ahead.
Proof of Life
Sinners is both a reckoning with the past and a clear-eyed examination of our present and future. Through the lens of music as a power that shifts culture, a great unifier with the potential of conjuring destruction, the film explores what it means to be truly free.
Set in 1932 in Mississippi, Sinners follows twins Stack and Smoke, both played with aplomb by Michael B. Jordan, who come back home after amassing a fortune (by questionable methods) in Chicago. With this fortune, they endeavor to create their own juke joint, a place where Black folks can let their hair down and forget about the outside world.
The twins meet up with their cousin, Little Sammie, played by the astounding newcomer Miles Caton, son of a preacher and affectionately called Preacherboy. Preacherboy plays a mean guitar, gifted to him by Stack and Smoke, against the wishes of his father, who tells him that the music he plays has the power to call up the Devil. Preacherboy ignores his father’s concern and departs with the twins to help set up the joint.
We ride along with the twins and their cousin as they gather supplies and people in preparation for their big grand opening, meeting an indelible cast of characters and winding through sets so meticulously crafted that we are transported back to the Mississippi of 1932. We meet former friends and lovers, troublemakers and allies. There are stories of woe, laughter that could make your side split in two, heartache and joy intertwined. For all their questionable tactics, it is evident the twins know how to not only bring people together, but also have a damn good time.
Coogler’s tender care for each complicated character in this tapestry makes it all the more tragic when disaster strikes the juke in the second half of the film. But before tragedy strikes, there is a hell of a party. The twins’ plans come together seamlessly, and the juke joint opens to a raucous crowd. There is music, food, dancing, and a beautiful array of Black folks from across the Delta who have all come to enjoy themselves.
There is a pivotal scene in the film where Preacherboy puts on a performance for the crowd so powerful, so potent, that the music alters the fabric of existence. A siren song, a conjuring, a meditation; Coogler illustrates the power of music by interspersing visions of the past and the future alongside the juke joint’s dancers, invoking beats from a time before 1932 and a time beyond 2026. We see breakdancers and ballerinas moving and grooving, a DJ spinning records, African and Chinese dancers. Then is now, and now is then. Music is everything.
Perhaps Preacherboy should have heeded the words of his father. For the music is indeed powerful, so powerful that it calls something from another realm. Something dangerous.
Yes, Sinners is a vampire movie. But it is also so much more than that. The vampires are a metaphor, an embodiment of what ailed Mississippi in 1932 and continues to ail us today. The bloodsucking represents the siphoning of joy, creativity, possibility. Money cannot protect the twins and their juke joint from the evils of white supremacy, any more than it can protect anyone with dark skin in a world dominated by the societal constructs of whiteness.
The vampires want Black folks’ music and stories, as whiteness has appropriated Black music and stories for generations, taking what can never belong to it as its own. The vampires are musicians, too, yet their music is sanitized, soulless in comparison to the music of Preacherboy and the juke joint’s revellers. Whiteness claims souls, but it is devoid of soul. The collection of music and stories, of food and style, can never be more than an imitation of the real thing. The poor man’s version of the richness of culture and life.
Life can never truly be extinguished, not when music—and love, and laughter, and joy in the face of suffering—exists. Evil may seem to prevail, but it can never triumph. Coogler wants the viewer to feel this, to know this in our bones. We have been disrespected, devalued, killed, and yet our voices, our music, our stories, our souls, continue. The blues exist because we have suffered, but also because we have lived.
The Friday Finds
Action. Fortify your soul and watch the Sinners musical performance at the Oscars! Pure magic.
Listen. “Last Time (I Seen the Sun)” by Alice Waters and Miles Caton from the Sinners soundtrack.
So I live like it’s the last time
For a long time, at the wrong time
When’s the right time?
Is it my time?
Mm-mm
And if I’m dreamin’
Then please, don’t wake me up
Watch. Sinners, of course! I watched the film on HBO Max, which I highly recommend as it includes access to extras, like a behind-the-scenes on Jordan’s transformation into twins and a fascinating featurette about the music of the film.
Read. The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter by Brionni Nwosu. Born into slavery in eighteenth-century Georgia, Nella Carter is dying. Though she has experienced first-hand the evils of humanity, she still believes in the goodness of people. Visited by Death, who believes all humans are petty and ruthless, Nella’s faith in wonder and beauty convince Death to offer her an opportunity: to live and prove him wrong. What follows is over a century of Nella’s life and loves, a story of resilience, beauty, and hope.
Thank you for being here. See you next time.
In solidarity,
Emma