You twins? Nah, we cousins. Growing up in the south, you hear cautionary tales of rattlesnakes hidden in the palmetto bushes. A time when blacks and whites shopped on opposite sides of the streets. And if you're like me, your grandmother would randomly break out into a humming spiritual tune while she was cooking or right before she laid out a TED talk about the dangers of getting wrapped up into the worldly exploits of the streets and the devil's playgrounds. This film touches on all of those nostalgic morsels from the music set design to the awesome performances from a very talented cast and we have to address some of the not so hidden symbolism within the film and also the choice of historical nuances. Sinners is here and I had to drop everything to go see it in the theater and join you all here to talk about it. I'd like to say thank you all for watching. And if you're new to Real Enigmas and Theories, welcome. Just so you know, this video will contain spoilers for the Sinners film. So, without further ado, let's pull out those magnifying glasses and cook. Now, Sinners is a greatest mixture of From Dust Till Dawn, the movie Life with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, Salem's Lot, and Brother Were Art Dial. You could add a couple more to this, but the film actually stands out on its own. In my opinion, it's an instant classic. The film is about twin brothers, Elijah and Elias Moore, infamously known as the Smoke Stack Twins or Smoke and Stack, played by Michael B. Jordan. They pick up their cousin Sammy Moore, known as Preacher Boy, played by Miles Kaitton. The twins have returned to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi to open up a juke joint after serving in World War I and working for Al Capone in Chicago before pulling off a heist that gave them enough booze, resources, and money to come back home and take advantage of the bootlegging industry. Their little cousin Sammy was the missing piece with his obvious musical abilities and his not so obvious ancestral inheritance of being a go. The film starts off by giving us a bit of lore about Grio. Grio or Griats aren't just performers. They're custodians of ancestral memory. They remember the lineage of kings, the triumphs of ancestors, and the wisdom that's buried in time. Other cultures around the world had their versions of the same ancestral human libraries. In Ireland, they were called the Philly, and in Chalkaw land, they were called firekeepers. This ability in the community is very sacred and it can attract abundance, but it also can attract evil. And we'll talk a little bit about that later. So, before the twins picked up their cousin, they met with the owner of a sawmill to purchase and use the spot for their juke joint. Hogwood had come late to their meeting, throwing the brother's plans off to pick up their cousin and get everything ready to open up the juke that night. Smoke in the blue hat, stack in the red hat. Smoke realizes that the floors in this dusty building are clean to the touch, and it peaks his twins eyebrows as well, to say the least. Hogwood takes the money and a caution from Smoke not to make any attempts to get any more money out of them or to enter their property or be met with full force. Hogwood offers the notion that the clan had been disbanded and the boys have nothing to worry about. I want to stop right here and bring a bit of historical context to what's going on around this time. After World War I ended in 1918, a wave of black soldiers returned home expecting greater opportunity and respect after fighting for America overseas. Instead, they faced brutal racism, job discrimination, and violent backlash. Especially during the Red Summer of 1919, when race riots exploded across dozens of United States cities, many black veterans were barred from getting steady work, black ballalled from unions, and targeted by white supremacist groups. In this harsh environment, organized crime became a pragmatic route to survival for some of these black veterans. I mean, these guys had military training. They knew tactics, discipline, logistics, and how to use weapons as well. And these skills made them a very valuable asset in the crime underworld. In cities like Chicago, New York, Detroit, and New Orleans, some black soldiers started working as security for speak easys, running bootleg operations, and acting as the muscle for number rackets. or they even managed the gambling dens themselves. The mafia and other ethnic crime syndicates, the Italians, Irish, and Jewish, saw these veterans as hard, smart, and trained, hiring them as enforcers, drivers, debt collectors, and even bodyguards. Sometimes they worked independently. Other times they operated under mafia families who needed tough, reliable men who they could pretty much underpay. While many black veterans weren't made men because of the race barriers, they weren't able to actually be in those families, they definitely played a critical frontline role in the day-to-day money-making operations of organized crime during the prohibition era. Their involvement not only fueled the underground economy, but it also laid the foundation for independent black underworld empires to rise in the 1930s and 40s. and Smoke and Stack seem to be two brothers who were trying to capitalize off of all this motion going on in the industry. Now, on the other hand, October 15th, 1932 sat at a pivotal crossroads in American history, right at the heart of the Great Depression and those final throws of prohibition. Franklin D. Roosevelt was aggressively campaigning against Herbert Hoover. He was promoting his vision of the New Deal while the nation reeled from record unemployment and financial collapse. Meanwhile, the streets were ruled by bootleggers and gangsters taking full advantage of prohibition's chaos. Organized crime families were rapidly evolving. And with the dude like Al Capone in prison, new figures like Frank Niti, Dutch Schultz, and Lucky Luciano were getting busy to solidify power. In fact, the groundwork for the mafia's infamous national commission was quietly being laid during this period, forever altering the criminal underworld's business model. Beneath the surface, America was undergoing an invisible but unstoppable shift from broken institutions to new experiments and government power. from gangster street wars to organized crime syndicates and from the prohibition era secrecy to a new more openly lawless capitalism. I love that Cougler chose this time period for the film because it's one of the most pivotal moments in American history. A crossroads if you will. Smoke and Stack were visionaries at a time when get in where you fit in was a makeorb breakak motto. So Hogwood being late to that meeting made the twins have to call an audible by splitting up with Smoke taking the truck with the equipment into town securing the food and getting some help from Bo and Grace Child while pretty much letting it be known that the smoke stack twins were back in town and they meant business. He hires a young girl off the street to watch his truck while he handles business with the child and he gives her a lesson about negotiation. And we'll talk a little bit about that later. He shoots two guys trying to rob his truck in broad daylight. Meanwhile, Stack and Sammy go to find more music talent and put the word out about the grand opening at the local train station. That's where they find Delta Slim being played by Delroy Lindo. Sammy bumps into a young lady named Pearlan who's admiring his guitar skills and he invites her to the juke joint. Stack also runs into one of his old flames named Mary who still loves him and he obviously has a soft spot for her as well. Both women are married by the way sinners. Now Smoke heads over to his old flame's house Annie who he shares the loss of a child with and she happens to be a practitioner of hudoo in the local community. Smoke pretty much pulls up on her to see if she'll do the cooking for the opening night. A few more characters were picked up on the way and they all make it back to the sawmill and start converting it into their juke joint while it gets closer to sundown. Meanwhile, not too far away from the juke joint, a man with smoking burnt skin is running to a nearby house to ask for help. The man claims to be victims of chalk tall bandits and the man and lady of the house answer the door with shotguns drawn. Their names are Bert and Joan. The couple allows the man to come in, but it turns out that that man is indeed a vampire running away from those cho hunters who no doubt are aware of what that man actually is and the dangers of the coming nightfall. So, the Choctaw hunters leave before the sun sets and the vampire Rimik takes on the husband and wife to join his vampire legion. Now, up until this part of the film, there was no mention of vampires, and this is like 45 minutes in. From there, we see the smoke stack twins newly purchased building go from an old sawmill to the bumping juke joint. And Remick and his two reborn recruits make their way to the juke joint to find Sammy after hearing him play and sing, which is an exercise of his go abilities. Now, Sammy was playing the guitar of one of his ancestors, who was the father of the smoke stack twins. Now, when the Smoke Stack twins were born, Stat was the second one, and he got stuck inside of his mother sideways, and Mary's mother actually helped her give birth to the twins, but the mother passed away during childbirth. Their father probably blamed Stack for the death of his wife, and he took it out on Stack through abuse and beating him throughout his childhood. He didn't really beat Smoke as much, but Smoke ended up killing the father to protect his brother. So, both parents' lives were ended in connection with the twins. Stack with the mother during birth and smoke with the father protecting Stat. Sammy having this connection to the guitar coupled with his gift played a tune that ended up being my favorite scene of the film. Sammy taps into his abilities on the stage in front of the entire juke joint and begins summoning spirits from the past and future. Sammy's gift in the way it was depicted on the screen along with the different musical undertones woven through time and culture. For me, this was the visual highlight of the film. It reminded me of that episode from the Wu Tang American Saga on Hulu when the Rizza was sampling and he was able to summon the ancestor who actually turned him on to the records that he was sampling. In that scene, they were displaying the Rizza's Grio abilities. And like the film centers, they also use the firefly symbolism which in West African cultures represents the messengers between the orun or spirit realm and the IA or earth. Even in chalk culture, fireflies represent the embers of the ancestors believe to guide the travelers at night. And it was at this point of the movie where things really start heating up because it was Sammy's gift that actually attracted Remick to the Juke joint. I mean, they even used the Firefly symbolism when the monsters got cornbread. It the fireflies were all over the place and it was such a sweet touch because the vampires eyes glow and they intertwined the fireflies with the vampires eyes glowing in the background. I thought it was such a dope horror touch. It wasn't actually stated in the film, but Remick also appears to possess the gifts of the Philly, much like Sammy does. One thing I absolutely loved about this film was the usage of actual common vampire lord. I mean, you're staying true to the roots of the deep south and the story of the sharecroers and the historical aspect of it. Why not just stick to the plan with the vampire lore as well? When someone is turned, a transfer of memories and talent occur that binds each person to Remick and turns his own memories and abilities within to the person that he actually turns. So much like common vampire lore, these vampires are actually a community in the mind as well as body. So pretty much Remick's motive becomes to obtain Sammy's gift and give Sammy his gift. and he states this close to the end of the movie. Remick actually tells Sammy this at some point. Remick also displays his abilities once he's gotten most of the people from the juke joint turned into vampires. He does this super dope rendition of the Rocky Road to Dublin, which is a song about the struggle of poor Irish folk making their way to Dublin, like a promised land of sorts. Now, let's take this time to examine something about the film that stood out to me heavily before the release of the film, and that's how they promoted it. Each of the character promo photos for the release stated, "We are all sinners," which made me immediately think of Catholicism. Catholics believe that we are indeed all sinners, even newborn babies, and we need God's grace for our entire lives. Slim even calls himself a sinner. Sammy rebels against his father and the church. Mary and Pearl were both married women who committed adultery. Well, you get the picture. Near the end of the film, Remick catches Sammy and begins to perform an unholy baptism of sorts, and Sammy starts to recite the 23rd Psalm. and Remick joins him stating that he remembers these very words being forced on his people by men who invaded their lands. Now this is where the Catholicism actually comes in. Catholicism hit Ireland hard around the fifth century mainly through missionaries like St. Patrick who himself was actually a British Roman. Now if Remick remembers this, he was alive around that time. either that or he has the memories of whoever turned him into a vampire that may have experienced this. Who knows? I don't know. But for hundreds of years, the British Empire suppressed Irish Catholics violently. No voting rights, no property ownership, no education in Catholic schools. This oppression locked Catholicism into the Irish identity. And after events like Cromwell's conquest of Ireland, tens of thousands of Irish men, women, and children were captured, sold, and shipped to colonies, especially Barbados, Jamaica, and the colony of Virginia here in the US. Many were literally called white slaves and advertised in newspapers, auctioned off, beaten, essayed, and pretty much worked to death. Their treatment was just as brutal as African slaves. However, their time was temporary as indentured servants, but indigenous American and African slaves time was permanent and you could become a slave through inheritance. A lot of people don't know this, but the first slaves in America were actually white and many were Irish. But just to be clear, there's a distinct difference in child slavery and indentured servitude. In 1847, during the Great Irish Famine, the Chalkaw Nation, who themselves had recently survived a brutal Trail of Tears, raised and sent about $170 to help the starving Irish people. Now, on the Spotify page for the Center's soundtrack, a newspaper article dated in 1911 alludes to Remick's arrival to America. You can go check that out. when he was being chased by those chalkawar hunters, he said that they had killed his wife. And at first, I took this as a ploy for sympathy from Bert and Joan. But the fact that Remick was actually being chased by Chalkaw and Bert indicating that there are no Indians in that area, given the history between the Irish and the Chalkaw, makes me wonder if he did indeed have a female with him. and he possibly actually went out to seek the chalk tall knowing the history behind them. But then when he got there, they realized what he was and they turned on him because Bert says that there are no Indians in that area and the Chalkaw definitely wanted to hightail it up out of there as the sun was going down. So did those Chalkaw hunters really kill his wife? The film also dives into the relationship with Chinese Americans in the south. The meeting with Smoke and the Childs display the complex positioning of the Chinese Americans in the Jim Crow South. After the Civil War, black Americans begin carving out their own economic strongholds with towns like Mound Bayou. Smoke actually references this community when talking to Sammy about giving up his own juke joint dreams. And he suggested for Sammy to go down to Mount Bayou, places like Rosewood, Tulsa, Greenwood, and even parts of Harlem where black farmers, doctors, bankers, and business owners thrived independently. But white elites, fearing the rise of wealth in the black community, devised a buffer system. Chinese immigrants fresh from the railroad labor and barred from the white neighborhoods were steered sometimes legally and sometimes economically into the black communities. Secretly backed by white-owned banks and supply chains, these Chinese-owned businesses became the front lines of resource extraction through grocery stores, laundromats, restaurants, and liquor stores that captured the black dollars and funneled profits out of the community where there would never be reinvested. The trick was black entrepreneurs were systematically blocked from competing through racist lending policies, city zoning, and outright intimidation. Chinese shop owners, while themselves marginalized by whiteness, were granted enough foothold to operate above black communities, but still beneath the white economic institutions. They were allowed to open up stores, but rarely own the land. their capital, the banking, the legal protections flowed through the white networks. Meanwhile, black residents had no real local ownership of their own. No supply chains, no food sources, or even basic service. They were trapped in a constant consumer role, steadily bleeding out the wealth with every dollar spent. And a lot of that still goes on to this day. By the 1950s and60s, the civil rights movement was a critical blow. The struggle against segregation was righteous, but integration had a devastating economic consequence. When black customers could finally shop at white department stores, attend white schools, and work at white collar jobs outside of their own communities, black towns and blackowned businesses were abandoned at scale. Young talent, doctors, teachers, lawyers left for white cities and the black dollars now funded white economies directly instead of circulating a few times inside the black neighborhoods. Civil rights victories may have opened doors socially, but it closed the door economically on the fragile independence of black communities, and they had to fight to reconstruct that, which never really happened. This is what literally ended communities like Mount Bayou. In the end, the two-step maneuver was complete. First, used the Chinese and other non-black immigrants to drain the growing black economy under the Jim Crow. Then, once black communities were weakened, finished the job with integration, siphoning the last drops of economic power into the white mainstream society. The tragedy is not that black Americans sought freedom. The tragedy is that the form of freedom they were offered was the one that dismantled their own systems of ownership, entrepreneurship, self-sufficiency while leaving them more economically vulnerable than ever. In other words, [ __ ] was better before the civil rights movement. The funny thing about this film touching on this is that Remick was actually trying to warn the brothers of this very thing. I noticed that Remick and Mary were very concerned after Annie was bitten and Smoke kept his promise to end her before she turned. Remick's main target was Sammy. However, he also wanted to obtain the memories and abilities of the hoodoo practitioner, but Smoke kept his word and ended Annie before that could happen. When you saw Annie shaking the bones on the gambling table, she had foreseen her future demise and didn't want her knowledge being used by Remick. Moreover, getting Annie into the fold would be a huge advantage in persuading Smoke to join, who would be another huge asset with Smoke's tactical skills alongside his newly vampire brother keeping the pillars of Waqen and Boaz intact. Getting the twins, Annie and Sammy, would surely seal the deal. And speaking of deals, Reik carried two gold coins with him and only offered him to the whites in the film. At first, the house of Bert and Joan and then again outside the juke joint with Mary. Smoke and stack also carried two silver coins with them. Call me crazy, but almost every time we saw the coins, they were in like a vesica pisces symbol. In ancient times, coins were used symbolically and ritualistically to represent a deal, a pact, or a contract. In ancient Greece, coins were placed in the mouths of the dead to pay the fairy men for passage across the river sticks. This was a spiritual deal, a coin for passage. In Rome, coins were buried or offered in deals to God's favor, victory, or prosperity. In China, ancient cash coins were not only traded but used for spiritual deals, rituals, protections, and offerings to the ancestors. Even in West Africa, cowry shells often acted like coins, and they were used in consulting the spirits about a deal or a decision. And we see many deals being made on the film. Sammy even notes to his father about how he's worked all week and him going out to play music is the trade for his hard work. Stack negotiates with Delta Slim about his compensation for opening night. Smoke enlightens the young girl outside about negotiating her time and watching the truck. He also negotiates the prices with Lisa Child. And Smoke even makes a deal with his brother to let Sammy live out his life. Hell, even Hogwood tries to negotiate before Smoke unloads the clip on him. And as the old saying goes, you don't get what you're worth, you get what you negotiate. There's so much we could continue to discuss, like the choice of names for several characters, namely Elijah and Elias, which are two versions of the same name. Something else I noticed at the church was that the choice to invert the triangle above the door. I can't really show you here because I don't have like any 4K visuals of it, but one moment the triangle was pointing up to the roof and then inside the church it changes. We could talk about the vultures that seem to show up everywhere and circle above as if they knew something were about to go down. We could talk about the Masonic symbolism with the songs about traveling. The twins being Waqen and Boaz. Mary with the checkered pattern matching Sammy's poster in the background. Even cornbread being the Tyler at the door. We could talk about Stack coming in the room with that Biggie style coogie sweater on in the fourfinger Stack ring. Sammy living on to open up a club and name it Pearl. But we'll save some of this stuff for the conversation in the comment section. Anyway, let's give Ryan Cougler, Michael B. Jordan and this entire cast and crew their flowers. This film is an instant classic and a masterpiece. The cinematography, lighting, sound design, score, acting, symbolism, the storytelling, and the editing, all of that [ __ ] is top tier. The cinema experience itself, watching on IMAX made it feel like you were right there in the juke joint at sometimes. The creativity and folklore behind this film sets it apart from any other project set in this time period. Hands down, I give this joint a 10 out of 10. Let me know what you thought about the film in the comments. And if you like this video, go ahead and do all that dope YouTube stuff for me by tapping that screen a few times. Anyway, that's all for my video tonight. I'll catch you in the next one. Peace.