"Nothing was given. All was earned. Hold onto what belongs to you."
Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, a young woman named Cora makes an amazing discovery during her attempt to break free from slavery in the Deep South in The Underground Railroad. Barry Jenkins is a literal god because he's incapable of making anything not beautiful. He has made success with If Beale Street Could Talk and Moonlight - which he won best adapted screenplay and there's the infamous best picture card mistake where it won over La La Land. By now, how could you expect any less than a masterpiece? And that's The Underground Railroad. Personally, I prefer his other films slightly more, but this is another amazing work. What entails is an epic and horrific journey with Cora traveling to freedom for slavery. Thuso Mbedu is masterful. This isn't a big performance like with Cynthia Erivo in Harriet (a disappointing movie with a great lead performance). Mbedu is more for the emotion and having to almost bottle everything up to save herself. It's hard to watch but what a well written character. All performances are great. William Jackson Harper has a supporting role and he has his best performance yet. Joel Edgerton as Ridgeway is absolutely wicked. He's very good at playing the bad guy. And for a youth performance, Chase Dillon as Homer is really good. You wouldn't think you'd get such good acting from an eleven-year-old.
The story might be slow for some, and it's intended to be that way. There are a few episodes that suffer from moments that drag a little, but it's easy to get past. Not everyone can handle slow burns, but I find you can get some of the best work from them. And with Barry Jenkins directing it's hard to find any flaws in both writing and execution. The writing is powerful. We've had cases of stories like this saying "racism and slavery is bad" and not much else. There's so much to be gained. We could use more like this. I know there have been complaints about the story in regards to plot. This is based on a historical fiction book. Historical fiction, obviously, means not everything is exactly history. For some reason, there's a fine group of people who can't wrap their head around it. Don't blame the series. Don't even blame the novel. If you don't like historical fiction, then don't watch it. Also don't watch one episode or less and give the whole series the lowest score possible. There have been many issues with that across multiple platforms. It bugs me and isn't doing anyone any good. If you don't like it, you can stop watching it and move on rather than going off about it.
Not only do we have the god that is Barry Jenkins, but we also have Nicholas Britell doing the score and James Laxton on camera. Starting with the score, Nicholas Britell is doing next-level work like all of his scores. For me, this is tied with Moonlight in second place for his best score right behind If Beale Street Could Talk. It's intense, longing, and overall just amazing with how it affects the atmosphere. As for the camera work, this is the best I've seen since Nomadland and 1917. Wow, is it breathtaking! There's emotion behind each frame and it captures everything gorgeously. There's hardly anything to complain about. And I mentioned the only issue I had was with some pacing. If you choose to watch this, I'd recommend trying to binge it all at once or at least close together. It's just that good and once you've watched one episode, it's hard not to watch the next. The Underground Railroad is easily one of the best limited series, and just regular series I've seen. Let's hope it can rack up some Emmys this come September. With as much emotion as it contains, I don't know how you can't connect with it in some way. Barry Jenkins hasn't failed us yet and certainly won't anytime soon.
