A conflict between a high school teacher and her star pupil
fuels the timely psychological drama “Luce.”
Confronting the issues of tokenism and race, it’s a riveting and
thought-provoking movie that resides entirely in gray areas, swirling in ideas
of youth, class, and opportunity.
The film’s
plot is kicked into gear with an essay written by Luce
Edgar (played by Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the exceptional, model student of his
suburban Virginia high school. A refugee from Eritrea, Luce
was adopted when he was 7-years-old by his white liberal parents, Peter (Tim
Roth) and Amy (Naomi Watts). The film is somewhat vague about his early life,
but it’s suggested that he suffered some trauma in his war-torn homeland and
even spent time as a child soldier.
Peter and
Amy spent years with him in therapy, working to earn his trust and helping him
overcome the horrors of his childhood to develop into the fine young man he is
today. And by all accounts, they’ve done a great job. He’s every bit the golden
boy they dreamed he’d become: a star athlete, valedictorian, and well-liked by
both peers and teachers alike.
But the
lustrous veneer of his image threatens to crack after he turns in a rather
incendiary paper to his history teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer).
Given the assignment to write in the voice of a historical figure, Luce settled on Frantz Fanon as his subject. A
pan-Africanist philosopher, Fanon argued that violence and brutality were
sometimes a moral necessity in the fight against colonialism. Harriet’s alarmed
enough by the paper’s content that she begins questioning Luce’s
picture-perfect exterior.
Her fears
are compounded when she finds a bag of fireworks in the boy’s locker. The
combination of violent, revolutionary rhetoric and potentially dangerous
explosives lead her to fear there may be a deeply-ingrained anger beneath Luce’s friendly demeanor. That maybe the atrocities he was
exposed to (or possibly committed) as a boy might have permanently altered his
view of the world in a way that can’t entirely be washed away.
We see the
tightrope Luce is forced to walk in his daily life,
the astronomical expectations placed on him, and the various lenses through
which others view him. While talking with a white friend about another teammate,
DeShaun (Astro), who was recently kicked off their
track team for drug-related offenses, the friend brushes off the comparison Luce draws between himself and the other boy. His friend
fumbles for an explanation for his dismissal, finally reasoning that DeShaun is “black, black.” Understandably, Luce asks what that makes him. “You’re just… Luce,” the boy responds.
The story
asks us to question what we think we know about people, leaving us to decipher
what its character’s motivations truly are. As Harriet continues her quest to
uncover the truth, Luce’s parents do whatever they
can to defend their son against (what they come to believe is) a rogue
teacher’s malicious vendetta.
“Luce” is an adaptation of J.C. Lee’s Off-Broadway play. Lee
also acts as co-writer on the film, and the screenplay’s dialogue sometimes has
a stagey quality that can sound overwritten. Occasionally its characters are
forced to spout ideas that threaten to make them feel like political talking
points rather than real flesh-and-blood people. And a few of the story’s plot
developments seem designed deliberately to provoke, at the expense of some of
the story’s realism.
The film’s
at its best when it’s delving into thorny ideas about the politics of
respectability and the pressure faced by those in America who aren’t white or
lucky enough to be born here, to act as exemplary models of their particular
race. Luce is constantly faced with people who want
to turn him into a symbol to prove their own beliefs. But it’s impossible to be
everything to everyone.
Never
lacking in ideas, the film also touches on rape culture, school security,
systemic discrimination, and mental health. It gets into dicier
territory with a related thread involving Stephanie Kim (Andrea Bang), a
student whose sexual assault Luce may or may not know
more about than he’s letting on.
We also get
glimpses into Harriet’s personal life, as she deals with a sister (Marsha
Stephanie Blake) in recovery. That plot leads to a scene of mental breakdown
that I’m not entirely convinced doesn’t tip uncomfortably into exploitative
territory.
But the film
is always exceptionally well-performed, by Harrison and Spencer in particular.
Harriet and Luce each emerge as fascinatingly complex
characters; two people with very different life experiences and ideas about how
they’re viewed by society. Through their characters, “Luce”
becomes a story about the faces we choose to present to the world, the
assumptions that get made about us, and the ones we hope never do.
This article appears in Aug 28 – Sep 3, 2019.
