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Regina King gets an opportunity to show off her considerable talents in Shirley (now on Netflix), a biodrama about a mid-century trailblazer in U.S. politics. She plays Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Congress, and I used the term “biodrama” instead of “biopic,” because the film focuses on her longshot 1972 run for the Democratic presidential primary over dramatizing her life story. So kudos to writer/director John Ridley (Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave) for not cramming multiple decades of events into a bite-off-more-than-you-can-narratively-chew movie, but can he elevate the film above the typical parameters of historical dramas?
SHIRLEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: An animated diagram illustrates the demographic breakdown of the U.S. House of Representatives: 435 members, 11 of them women, five of them Black, none of them Black women. All true, until Shirley Chisholm (King) came along. She’s a schoolteacher from Brooklyn, the daughter of immigrants of Bajan descent. She dreamt big, and now she’s on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, posing for a photo with her fellow freshman House electees, the vast majority of whom are aging White men. Her husband Conrad (Michael Cherrie) is with her all the way; her sister Muriel (Reina King) represents her skeptical family, who sit somewhere on the spectrum between disapproval and concern for her well-being. They may have a point – Shirley’s a Black woman in a high-profile position in a country torn apart by racial strife. She almost certainly will struggle. The work will be trying; the work will be hard. It’s 1968.
Shirley hasn’t broken in her office at the Capitol, and she’s already putting her firm and admirable confidence to work, telling off a White congressman who just can’t stand making the same amount of money as a Black woman, and pushing back against her agriculture committee assignment (why would a rep of a New York City district have anything to do with agriculture?). One moment, she’s warned that you just don’t talk to the Speaker of the House, and the next, there she is, not just talking to the Speaker of the House, but assertively speaking her mind. Any bullshit rule in front of her isn’t a warning, but a challenge. That’s Shirley.
Jump ahead to Dec., 1971. Shirley’s reputation has stretched far outside New York City. Support from proponents in Florida spurs the notion that she should run for president. Her chances of winning are miniscule, and her budget is just as tiny, but it’s more about taking baby steps for the next Black woman who comes along and dreams big, right? She appoints Conrad head of security. Wesley McDonald Holder (Lance Reddick) is her adviser. Arthur Hardwick Jr. (Terrence Howard) will raise funds and Stanley Townsend (Brian Stokes Mitchell) will run the campaign. Her former intern Robert Gottlieb (Lucas Hedges) will help energize the youth vote, since the voting age was just changed to 18. Barbara Lee (Christina Jackson) joins the campaign to work the phones and provide other support.
It’s a damn fine team Shirley has behind her, counterbalancing her big-idea optimism with pragmatism. She’s refreshingly direct in her speech and mannerisms, which riles some of her allies who stress the importance of political context. She learns some hard lessons about compromise. She survives an assassination attempt. She fights through racism and sexism. She struggles to maintain functional relationships with her husband and sister. She delivers rousing speeches. She counts votes from delegates in the lead-up to the Democratic primary – and there aren’t nearly enough. But she’s forging the path, which was always the goal.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Shirley is on par with the similarly uneven Rustin – both tell the stories of mid-century Black leaders and feature charismatic lead performances at the service of a so-so screenplay. Selma is a better version of this type of story; Judas and the Black Messiah is even better than that.
Performance Worth Watching: “Tour-de-force” is a cliche, but that’s the best way to describe King’s magnetic, enthusiastic performance.
Memorable Dialogue: Lots of sloganeering passes for dialogue here, but you can’t deny the power of Shirley doubling down on her motives: “Yes, I am just a schoolteacher from Brooklyn. And Harriet was just a slave, and Rosa was just a domestic.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: King is the reason to watch Shirley. Her inspired performance and Ridley’s good intentions are the spackle and duct tape holding together a clunky and sluggish movie structured like a series of Wikipedia bullet points and mired with exposition. King helps fill in the cracks of a screenplay that’s cluttered with vaguely consequential supporting characters and tries to convey too much contextual information, yet still feels underwritten.
Who Chisholm truly is as a human being – her motives, her inspirations, her goals – aren’t on the page, but in King’s nonverbal characterization. She gives us the sense that Chisholm was the same stubbornly dedicated, matter-of-fact person whether she was at home with her husband or at the dais, confidently orating to a roomful of people. You could argue that such consistency makes her a ill-suited to be a politician, but Shirley puts positive spin on that cynical notion, asserting that we need more politicians like her. When Chisholm says, “The process doesn’t exist in politics for Black women,” the sentiment applies to principled, forthright and earnest types, too.
Couched in King’s performance is the tension between Chisholm the person and Chisholm the politician, and the battle between the system’s attempts to change her and her attempts to change the system. It’s an external conflict she tries not to internalize – she wants to put herself out there, uncompromised, so Americans can see her honesty and find her worthy of their votes. That’s how politics should work, instead of all the backdoor dealings and deflating compromise, and she’ll die on that hill. A scene in which Chisholm, against her advisers’ advice, visits bitter rival George Wallace in the hospital after he survives an assassination attempt illustrates how she wants to put human decency above politics, and shows how she believes that grace can be a savvy political maneuver, too.
Be thankful King works so hard to bring Chisholm to life in these moments, because the rest of Shirley feels incongruent with that ethic. She pushes through the slow parts, the hokey parts, the underdeveloped parts depicting tension with her husband and sister, the parts that render Chisholm as near-worthy of sainthood instead of a flawed person like the rest of us. The film would otherwise be a repetitive and dully dutiful portrayal of a politician who hit major speed bumps and enjoyed a few small victories – small victories that became the first ripples of political evolution. Chisholm deserves an overall better biographical film, but at least King does her justice.
Our Call: Shirley is a decidedly mixed bag, but I didn’t praise King’s performance to the hills just to pan the movie. STREAM IT to see one of the best actors in the business do some of her best work.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
