The Underground Railroad

 

Enslaved on a Georgia cotton plantation owned by the cruel Terrance Randall (Benjamin Walker), Cora (Thusa Mbedu) and Caesar (Aaron Pierre) escape to freedom. The pair are separated, and Cora, now a wanted fugitive, must rely on the underground railroad to ferry her from place to place. All the while, she is pursued by the slavecatcher Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton) and his young black apprentice Homer (Chase Dillon).

 

Barry Jenkins’s Prime Video miniseries adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed novel may not hit all the highs of its source material, but it still does the book justice. Whitehead’s central conceit was to meld history and magical realism: the titular railroad here is a literal train, and different states have adopted policies that allegorize America’s fraught approaches to race. North Carolina, for instance, has abolished slavery but also slaves (executing any runaways found therein) while South Carolina has adopted a paternalistic social welfare program that serves as a front for what amounts to the Tuskegee Experiment. Jenkins preserves these elements and renders them in sharp visual detail. The presentation is harrowing without being gratuitous, a procession of brutal images accompanied by Nicholas Britell’s equally haunting score.

 

In front of the camera, Mbedu convincingly embodies Cora’s determination and will to survive. Edgerton’s performance is showier, and Ridgeway’s grandiosity either adds to the character’s mystique (as was the case in the book) or comes across as a ridiculous, overcompensatory put-on (more the case here as the series shows a younger Ridgeway taking up his vocation to spite his father). William Jackson Harper puts in a good turn as Royal, a railroad conductor who befriends Cora, but the series isn’t with him long enough to get to know him well, something true of much of the supporting cast. Even in Homer’s case – he gets far more screen time – we are kept at arm’s length, which feels like a missed opportunity.

 

While the stakes are high, the series’ episodic pacing and questionable narrative digressions do it no favors. The Underground Railroad is at its best when it stays engaged with the story’s present. Even when it isn’t on the move, it can keep the audience’s attention, as is the case with Cora’s sojourn to a Black-owned Indiana winery. However, the series is just as likely to dedicate whole episodes (rather than mere flashbacks during the journey) to past events, which undercuts the momentum.

 

Rarely an easy watch and not always a rewarding one, The Underground Railroad is nevertheless, at its best (i.e. the ninth episode), powerfully acted and aesthetically dazzling.