Color Book represents the best of what movies can do. When they’re right, you get insights into worlds that you know very little or nothing about, and grow in empathy because of it. Good to know that I wasn’t alone in convoluted traversing across a city just to attend my first baseball game too.
Although my experience getting to Comiskey Park pales in comparison to poor Lucky (William Catlett). His name feels like a cruel joke, having just lost the love of his life (Brandee Evans), and forced to be sole caretaker of Mason (Jeremiah Alexander Daniels), their roughly teenage soon with Down Syndrome. With poor Mason missing his mom, Lucky sees an opportunity to take Mason to his first Atlanta Braves baseball game. But with no car, father and son head out on the MARTA public transit to the game. I’m gonna guess MARTA did NOT sponsor this movie based on what happens on there.
David Fortune badly wants his movie to feel like moving art. For the most part he succeeds in giving Color Book the power he knows it possesses. The black and white backdrop and music score set the stage wonderfully; other than a random cell phone this movie could have taken place in Atlanta for the most part at any time in the last 100 years. The use of balloons as a metaphor is simple and effective: a way to convey motivations behinds Mason’s actions without asking too much of him with dense monologues when the movie shows he’s already doing herculean work just to sound out basic words. It’s in the transitions where Fortune succeeds most though. As we get closer to Truist Park, the buildings and houses get bigger and nicer, little by little, really highlighting that even though this might be a couple hours of transport, for Mason and Lucky, it’s as epic as an intergalactic journey across the universe from where they started.
Being an art piece is one thing. But for Color Book to really hit home it has to deliver emotionally just as much. The setup certainly helps, 1 scene with Mason and his mother makes it clear how important she was to their family unit, and how both Lucky and Mason are adrift without her. From there, we see the slice of life joys and struggles of father and son on their new path: one understanding and one not. Poor Mason’s “where is mom” questions are like daggers to poor Lucky, struggling himself in his grief. And then it’s off to the game. William Catlett and Jeremiah Alexander Daniels do their version of a buddy road trip, with Catlett carrying the story and Daniels dropping a line here and there to mix things up, both in funny and contemplative ways. David Fortune secretly has planted all sorts of little dominoes that he starts to fall as we get closer to the stadium. There’s sweet parts of the trip encountering a friend or two, and then there’s really danger and stakes as well: that middle 20 minutes is as scary as anything I’ve seen this year, a testament to how well Color Book tells its story and gets you invested into Lucky and Mason. By the time we get to the game and the dinner after, like all tales, you’re kind of just happy you went on the journey, regardless of what happened when you get to the destination with these two, and more than ready to pass out with all that happened along the way.
African American stories rarely get the dignity and beauty Color Book contains. So when you get a chance to view one, it makes you linger a little longer, and pay closer attention, leaving you better for experiencing it. David Fortune, this is a stellar first feature! I can’t wait to see what insight into life you come up with next. If you want, I can give you my clown car approach to attending White Sox games from my grandfather’s deranged logic.