Every filmmaker has to start somewhere. Aleshea Harris is starting at the top. The award-winning playwright’s directorial debut “Is God Is” is one of the most stunning first features in recent memory, a jarring and confident motion picture that experiments with every aspect of the medium. And incredibly, all the experiments are a success.
Based on Harris’ 2018 play, “Is God Is” stars Mallori Johnson and Kara Young as twin sisters whose father, the Monster (Sterling K. Brown), burned them alive as small children. Anaia (Johnson) is covered in scars from head to toe. Racine (Young) has no scars on her face, and beats the living hell out of anyone who bullies her sister. They live together, speaking psychically, even urinating at the same time, a perfect dyad living an imperfect but loving life.
They thought their mother (Vivica A. Fox) died in the fire, but she’s alive, and she’s dying, and she has one last wish: She wants Anaia and Racine to find and kill their father. Mother created them, and they think of her as God, so they go on a mission from God to destroy, essentially, the devil himself. And while they’re at it, hey, if they want to destroy his life and kill everyone else around him, well, God says that’s okay too.
“Is God Is” is Old Testament. It’s Greek tragedy. It’s gothic. It’s punk. It’s grotesque. It’s beautiful. Our heroes are modern Hamlets, sworn to bloody revenge but wrestling with the implications. Anaia thinks she isn’t a killer. Racine thinks she can go through with it. Maybe they’re both wrong. Racine doesn’t need Anaia to help, but she does need her sister’s support, so they travel the United States wondering how they’re going to kill a man, eventually deciding on a rock in a sock, like they’re picking a fight with Goliath.
To find the Monster, or perhaps just the Man (or perhaps those things are interchangeable), they have to trace his history of violence and abuse. Along the way, Anaia and Racine uncover cults that worship at the altar of that selfish, false, absent, masculine god, indistinguishable from Christian lore. They encounter a lawyer left mangled and haunted by the evil he enabled with worldly manipulations. And, eventually, they track down the Man himself, in a confrontation as loaded and perverse and shocking and eerie as any late film confrontation.
Sterling K. Brown spends most of “Is God Is” off-screen, spoken of, glimpsed only in flashback from a distance or far too close. He’s a modern Harry Lime, an enigma to be obsessed over and then suddenly re-evaluated when he finally opens his mouth. It’s up to Brown to make a character defined by overpowering evil into someone who, perhaps, might be someone entirely unexpected, even if we think we know better. Aleshea Harris’ insidious screenplay and fascinating direction make “Is God Is” a vivid autopsy of abusive men and the damage they leave in their wake, including the women who enable them and the young men they corrupt and empower.
But this isn’t Brown’s movie, it’s Mallori Johnson and Kara Young who captivate and intrigue. They play impossibly rich characters, filled with vitality and humor and morbidity and pain, who are ill-equipped for an epic quest and figure it out as they go along. Johnson and Young are exquisite and multidimensional actors, able to embrace the film’s classical symbolism while tethering those big ideas to reality.
“Is God Is” hits theaters on Friday after early access screenings begin Monday.
“Is God Is” is not a rote morality play, and it isn’t leading to a pat conclusion about how heroes don’t kill, or evil always loses in the end, or even that evil always wins. Aleshea Harris takes the grand tradition of narrative storytelling, everything from spaghetti westerns to religious satire to grindhouse extremism, and patches all the living, breathing pieces into a beautiful Frankenstein monster. Except Harris never abandons her creation. Harris sees the flaws in her characters and their world and embraces them, never approving, but always sensitive and fascinated.
“Is God Is” is so emotionally, dramatically, philosophically complex that it’s tempting to put on professorial airs and focus entirely on its depth. But it is also, just as importantly, electrifying to watch. Harris’ story is hilarious, shocking, action-packed, horrifying, and never, ever, ever dull. Some films are roller coasters. “Is God Is” is the whole amusement park, designed by a twisted genius, with secret passages and hidden clues. The unexpected shifts in voice-over, the bracing editorial trickery, the dramatic shifts between silence and violence, they make blockbuster entertainments look decaffeinated by comparison.
Watching “Is God Is” is like getting invited to a party that’s way above your social pay grade. I’m not sure I’m cool enough to deserve a film like “Is God Is.” I’m probably not, but at least I can watch in awe as Aleshea Harris pushes the form and function of cinema to the limit. If we’re lucky this is the start of a very exciting career, but “Is God Is” is exciting enough to endure on its own. “Is God Is” is god damned good.
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