This is a series not witnessed but felt.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
It is more cunning and potent than that more resplendent, too, in its visual and sonic grammar.
Cora is viewed as something monstrous and aberrant by the white people around her.
Shes resistant at first.
Her mother remains the one figure to ever slip his grasp, and hes hell-bent on catching Cora.
The Underground Railroadisnt flawless.
There are issues with its approach, especially in the construction and development of its central character.
This is a series not so much witnessed but felt.
Jenkinss camera captures something Ive always recognized in the South: the particularities of the sunlight.
The sun feels different everywhere you go.
When I am home in Loreauville, Louisiana, it reminds me of honey thick and sweet.
It envelops your body with its heat, like wearing a wool coat in the middle of summer.
And it makes this work cinematic in ways other television shows rarely are.
But few actually move with the rhythm of film.
Their work, like Ophulss, has a swimming quality.
It sincerely and slowly pans through its environment, charting faces, bodies, and landscapes.
But it would be simplistic and inaccurate to call Jenkinss style roving.
The camera is never a neutral observer.
It is curious, empathetic, and deliberate.
Jenkins deploys it delicately and forcefully, with the dancerly grace of a ballerina.
The visual lyricism at work here is what makes the characters feel so alive.
)Point-of-view shots are plentiful, lending the series a remarkable, even intimidating, intimacy.
Open doorways are a focal point, harkening to John Fords work inThe Searchers.
Sometimes alone, other times in a group, these shots have the quality of portraiture.
There is an extraordinary moment inepisode ninefor how gently it worms its way into its characters perspective.
Violence and death are never far within this world.
It would be a fools errand to believe there is meaning in bearing witness to such matters.
As if it has ever changed the heart and mind of a non-Black person.
Jenkins resists ascribing meaning to violence.
This isnt to say it isnt seen on the series.
But Jenkins handles this scene differently.
We never see what happens to Caesar.
We hear it from the lips of Ridgeway, who relays his brutal fate to Cora.
She puts her hand to her mouth to muffle her cries in order not to give Ridgeway any satisfaction.
There are no cutaways to scenes or even flashes of what happens.
Jenkins doesnt want us to turn away from trauma.
He wants us to look at it from a different angle.
Cora is a woman so haunted by the past she refuses to escape it.
The ghost that lingers most pointedly is that of her mother.
The absence of Mabel is a double loss for Cora.
Shes enigmatic, rough-hewn, quick to anger.
Her anger is rooted in the loss of her mother.
Mabels eyes are white, and they replay images of Coras birth.
With one swift motion, Cora slits her throat.
By the end of the show, I had a frustrating realization: Cora is an utter cipher.
Coras inscrutability is directly linked to the fact that damn near every decision she makes is a trauma response.
She often pushes away the very people she needs to let in.
This isnt to say Coras character can only be found in moments of distress.
Theres a desperation to her, a longing to connect previously unseen.
But she is guided by trauma in ways no other character is, and it renders her impenetrable.
I cant fully answer these questions.
I yearned for Cora to be emboldened by her anger, not nullified by it.
But isnt it enough that Cora is just trying to survive?
Why do I want such a specific narrative of catharsis and triumph that the show refuses?
Perhaps its because of my own history.
I suppose I wanted something in this story that life cant provide.
I wanted to wrest their names from oblivion.
I wanted to understand not just the horrors visited upon their bodies whose remnants have been lost.
I wanted what no show or archive can possibly provide: a history rewritten and made whole.
ButThe Underground Railroadoften resists giving us what we want.
Every time hope blooms, it quickly goes to rot.
There is no catharsis.
There is no closure.
There is, however, something more soulful and true.
