As I Am

I'm not a fan of spoken word because at times I find it is not only trying to put intangibles into words, but into words that fit together in a way that flows as a piece of poetry. In short I sometimes think that it can get very close to being pretentious. As I Am walks that line at times because it is a dense piece of poetry that at times seems to put beauty of the words above the honesty and truth of the speaker, however it consistently stays on the right side of the line and the result is something rather beautiful even if it doesn't totally come off.

We have spoken word from a man whose heart stopped when he was aged 2 and technically he died, later as a young man his father was gunned down in the streets of his Memphis hood – just two "highlights" in a life lived on the rough side of town where nothing is easy or comes easy. As Dean narrates with a tone that engages and words that are described and well-phrased, we get images from the streets and the hood that range from green areas that have seen better days through to the more obvious night scenes of people on the streets illuminated by the lights on police cars. Although again the choice of images get a little close to being a bit obvious, they are beautifully filmed and their selection seem to speak more to daily life rather than being cherry-picked to shock or be poverty-porn.

I don't want to praise it too much because I am aware of how fine a line it walks and while for me it pulled it off, for another viewer the position of that line may be different and as a result it would not have the same effect. That said, it does work really well for me and it is not so much a short film or documentary so much as it is a spoken word and visual image poem, with the two elements very professionally done with feeling and heart. The beautiful cinematography is almost too good perhaps and threatens to detract from the grim reality of it, but then maybe that was the point – that it is not a piece just about the horror and the suffering but just about the life, whether good or bad, it is still life.