Forgotten Film Friday: Medicine for Melancholy

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman I started this Black History Month discussing how important Undercover Brother was for me. It helped me find myself in in a world where blackness often comes with deft cliches and stereotypes that as a society it asks us to wear as truth. As I got older my love for that film never stopped but it found it did not relate to my confusion at the world I was in now. But in 2008 a film stumbled into my life thanks to the Daily Show called Medicine for Melancholy and it saved my confused heart. The premise for Medicine for Melancholy is that two black twenty something hipsters have a one-night stand. They awake the next day and instead of never speaking to each other again they share a day where they discuss issues facing African Americans in an ever gentrifying San Francisco. The plot is loose and really works based on the charms of the leads. Wyatt Cenac of The Daily Show at the time is what got me to watch this film. His comedy was often reflective of my world view. Being a light skinned black male to most people who meet me, his reflections on politics and the social cultures of America often struck a note with me. To me this film had to have something about its content that spoke to him as very rarely did films of this nature. I was not wrong and his performance is tender, understood, crushing and beautiful all at once. He is matched with Tracey Heggins who knows exactly how to match Cenac’s energy. There chemistry reminded me of the first time I saw Before Sunrise. A picture of two people finding each other at the right time. This film is the directorial debut of Barry Jenkins who floored the world of cinema with Moonlight. Barry Jenkins’ speaks to parts of the African diaspora that few other directors do. He knows how to talk about subjects that other directors in this space do not know how to do. It is often a discussion about blackness in relation to those stereotypes and cliches that we are expected to exist with in. Which brings me full circle. This film touched me, I normally talk to much about the power of a film’s techniques and skills but for me this film was a reflection of myself. Barry Jenkins made a film that spoke to me at a time when I needed it again. This film is personal to me because I have and always will feel left out in the greater story of being black in America. I have always enjoyed music where black and brown faces are not as common, I have always enjoyed films where stories about people like me are never the subject, and because of that I have often felt left out. No one talks about what is like to be the young black boy who is so mad at the world because he just wants to listen to midwestern emo and watch French New Wave films but feels like he is being held to a standard of toughness he will never have. That young black man who worries about the other people who look like him but who will never take him seriously as one of them because he is too light. The young man who didn’t relate to late 2000’s hip-hop but wanted to scream at the top of his lungs to modern hardcore because he knew what it mean to be alone in a crowded room. Medicine for Melancholy not only showed me I wasn’t alone in being someone like that but that I deserved love. I deserved to be treated as someone. Now that wasn’t the point of the film but it was what my stotic 17 year old heart found. Next month I will be back in regular form writing about dope scores and shots but for this week I wanted to talk about this film because cinema is talking about representation. We are often not represented in cinema because cinema loves cliches. It loves working around assumptions. There will never be a movie about me unless I do something incredible or infamous but directors like Barry Jenkins speak to those black men and women who don’t reflect the culture of Will Parker produced film but reflect all of us who wonder if we matter.