I have seen Ryan Coogler’s latest film Sinners (2025) three times and counting. Everything about this film stays with me and the strongest aspect is the full-bodied rendering of authentic layered lives. Every setting, character, line, costume, song, and camera angle contains multitudes. The many intersections, crossroads, questions, nuances, and idiosyncrasies of life as we live it. Sinners speaks directly to three themes I ruminate on: ancestor connection/veneration, freedom, and music.
The film is grounded in the reality of Mississippi in the 1930’s. It brings ancient Irish lore that makes the mythical concrete. The intention and research are applied in the layered tiers and filling of a master baker’s cake. Social media is full of people digging into their families and roots, sharing stories and personal lived experience. The outpouring is overwhelming and beautiful for any curious person who reveres origins. I expected to be scared in the theater, not seen and understood. By now I should expect Ryan to give above and beyond what we assume or imagine.
Surreal Montage
Sammie a.k.a. Preacher Boy (Miles Caton), younger cousin to Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), is blessed with a love and gift for music, specifically the blues. His father, a preacher, rails against the use of Sammie’s gift except in church, fearing for this son’s soul. But Sammie is a griot, a concept introduced by Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) in the opening sequence. A person who can “make music so pure it pierces the veil between life and death”, known as filídh and fire keepers to the Irish and Choctaw respectively.
“The past and the future merge to meet us here. “ – Lemonade (2016). I remember Sammie playing the guitar in the Kodak video where Ryan explains aspect ratios and film formats. Nothing could have prepared me for the fullness of the scene. Sammie plays, Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) tells him we brought our music with us, it’s sacred and big. Annie’s voice returns as the past and future arrive. I thought there would be two ancestors, one for past and one for future, but they kept coming.
Dancing, gliding, leaping from every part of the country across decades and generations. All the styles of music and dance that Black Americans birthed met in one place. From our West African roots to hip-hop, the connection is clear. We are rooted in story telling from the top of our heads to the soles of our feet. Instruments, voices, bodies, we use everything we have to express ourselves.
Sammie called everyone’s people, from West Africa to California to China. The seamless visual and sonic blend of the timeline overwhelmed me, especially with the future extending to the present. “Oh, Ryan” I said, out loud, right before I started crying. Every morning, I greet my ancestors and request their help with the day’s focus. They always move for me, which I appreciate. I want to jam at Club Juke with my blood and chosen spirits, it’s a captivating notion. One that some would go to any length for.
Free For a Day
I wonder about freedom regularly. What does it truly look like? How does it feel? Who has it? Would we know how to function in it? No one moves in full autonomy in Sinners with Jim Crow looming in the back, waiting. Does freedom come from fleeing trauma and chaos? Or returning to build something of your own for your community? Is it choosing to live and love among those who know you, your roots and home? Do you follow your calling and forge your own path in the world? Or can you drink enough to keep the trauma and troubles at bay? Everyone deserves their individual peace, away from the hell they did not create.
Sinners also features a trapped soul, seeking connection by questionable means. Remmick, our vampire “villain”, remembers Gaelic Ireland. He lived through colonization and the accompanying cultural destruction, theft, and erasure. He remembers life before Christianity was forced upon his people. Remmick knows the power of the filidh, I assume he sought a fire keeper, and the Choctaw chased him out. Sammie, our griot, is the key to Remmick’s deepest desire. Desperate to see his people again, for their spirits to comfort him, a joyous night turns to torment.
The humans seek freedom to choose and live without interference. The vampire seeks to commune with what he has lost and acquire the humans’ stories and experiences to feel the void. What do you do? Live out your days under white supremacy or become immortal with a caged soul? Let your soul cross over to the other side of the veil? Break your back under the Mississippi sun or never feel its warmth on your skin? When the choice is made for you how do you adapt? Is the freedom in the choice or the circumstance?
Maybe freedom lives where you find it, even for a limited time. Through joy, music, and community. In the times when you can leave the weight of the world at the door, get in this party and let go of your body. Perhaps it’s found in risking your life to save or liberate your loved ones. To keep torment away from them, give them a chance to escape. Or is it the autonomy in choosing your soul’s next place, knowing there are people waiting for you. Before we enter that place, we find moments that feel and sound like freedom.
Bury That Guitar
Music is an undeniable power. A few chords transport us to another place. It conjures people, places, experiences, and feelings. Songs that feel like summer evenings or rainy days. Melodies that shift your mood and bring you back to yourself. Lyrics that parents or friends can never seem to remember. The BPMs that make a workout easier to bear. Instrumentals ease the tension in your mind making room for clarity and focus. The grooves that beckon your body to move.
Music is a language we all speak. Delta Slim hums a song after telling Sammie and Stack how he knows the chain gang. Music is the only way to settle the spirit after recounting an anecdote that was the reality for our ancestors two or three generations ago. That moment was spontaneous for Delroy Lindo, he felt it at the end of the monologue and let it move as needed.
Sammie is called to music, blues specifically. A place to express emotions and the sharp edges of life. Sammie holds the gift of connection and healing, the essence of music. Music is a necessity to life; a day cannot pass without it. Music motivates, encourages, discerns, and purifies. In Sinners music brings the community together, tells stories, calls the ancestors and the damned, and frees the spirit.
I hum the mmms of “I Lied to You” and belt out “Pale, Pale Moon” in random spurts. “Rocky Road to Dublin” and “Dangerous” start my morning runs. The score projects the accompanying scenes in my mind. One of my favorite uses of sound is when Annie asks Smoke how he knows that her prayers and root work aren’t what kept him and Stack safe over the years. The build of rustling tones matches the cadence of her speech and the power of Hoodoo.
A Blessing
Sinners sent a parallel surge of pride through me like Black Panther (2018). Of course, both masterpieces belong to Ryan Coogler. Both are necessary and make me proud. Black Panther made me hungry to be a part and Sinners told me I already am. The former gives the potential of a people who aren’t violently disrupted by colonization. The latter is the true power in the Black American seat of the African Diaspora.
I appreciate that Ryan states he is not an anomaly. Yes, he is a Black director but his achievements shine among any group of directors. No one matched his gross in 2018 at the box office. In 2025 he is bringing cinema back, audiences are excited to view his work multiple times. Blackness informs his art and is the subject he preserves and shows the vastness and richness of. He doesn’t fall into the trap of other professionals who don’t want to be a “Black” *insert career*. They try to avoid the box so badly that they build a new one. Their scope is limited for fear that pulling from heritage, culture, and instinct will cage them. I don’t see this happening to Ryan, he pulls from everything.
Sinners is why we need as much original work as possible. It’s why creating needs to be left to the creatives and not the C-suite. I laughed, I cried, wished I had someone who’s body won’t forget me, felt a little anxious at times, and cheered Hogwood’s demise. I saw my great grandparents in the Mississippi cotton fields. The film is funny, frightening, humorous, sexy, truthful, gorgeous, culturally rich, and historically accurate. It is full. It has everything a cinematic experience needs without sacrificing its soul.
Thank you, Ryan, Zinzi, Ruth, Autumn, Hannah, Ludwig, Serena, the entire cast, and every crew member for the time you put into this film. I will carry it with me forever, it has changed my life.
