A vampire movie set in the 1930s, Mississippi, may seem out of the left field for director Ryan Coogler. But their personal ties with the history and explorations of race and belonging are consistent with their other four films, “Fruitvale Station”, “CRED” and the “Black Panther” that breaks the album and its sequel “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”.
“The sinners,” Coogler told NBC News, is a tribute to his uncle James, who “was the oldest male member of my Mississippi family.”
“It meant a lot to me,” Coogler continued. “He died just after he was in postproduction in ‘Creed’ and all he would do is touch Blues Records.”
The old friend and collaborator of Coogler, Michael B. Jordan, plays the twins Smoke and Stack, who leave the Mississippi delta to fight in World War I and then settled in Chicago, where they are rumored to work with the infamous to the Capone. The brothers return to Mississippi with cash bundles to open a Juke Board with his cousin Sammie (a debut as an actor for singer Miles Caton), who plays the “devil’s music” on his guitar while ignoring the warnings of his preacher father.
While the twins are prepared for the opening night, they add to the Slim Blues (Delroy Lindo) mixture musician, as well as his love interests Annie, a root woman performed by the star of “Lovecraft Country” Wunmi Mosaku, and the María de Hailee Steinfeld, which is perceived as Blanca, among others.
In compliance with the strict racial division of the time, the white vampires, however, were not on the guest list.
Blues Music is essential for the movie. “I was trying to understand why my uncle loved it so much,” Coogler said.
“When I got into him, in terms of investigating him, he simply flew me,” Coogler added. “I concluded that this art form is probably the greatest contribution of our country to global culture.”
The Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, classmate of the Film School of the University of Southern California in Southern California, who has obtained all his feature films, including “Sinners”, developed an appreciation for his father’s blues. The old Göransson became a life fan of the genre when Mississippi Blues artists like Albert King toured Europe and stopped in Sweden. Witness of his uncle’s passion for the blues in someone who did not even cause the United States, he stirred it deeply, he said.
“He was on a blues trip with Ludwig and his father, and it was his father’s dream of all his life to go to Mississippi,” Coogler said. “This is a 70 -year -old man from Sweden and we are standing in springs planting in the Mississippi delta, and he has tears in my eyes. And I have tears in mine for two different reasons.”
That trip to the birthplace of the Delta Blues popularized by Charley Patton inspired Coogler to make the “sinners” as big and boldly as possible. The director was in sight to show “how brilliant these people were, how they persevered and how their culture was for these metropolis and dominated, and to dispel all the lies told about them.”
