Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAbsolutely Love It - Great insight/representation of the world too many didn't, don't, or can't see!
Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2023
I love the "drawn out" scenes ... I've read some comments about long and "useless" footage that didn't need to be in the films. (scoffs) Those people don't know what they are looking at and clearly continue to walk around with blinders on. You have to immerse yourself into the moments captured in each scene, in each frame to fully appreciate the culture and why things were and are the way they are. Why do you need to watch 5 minutes (or more) of two characters "grinding" on the dancefloor in 'Lovers Rock' ... because it allows you to fully understand the characters, to fully understand the lure of what finding something that is missing in your life does to you, to see how that can distract you from the evil around you ... for so many more reasons that should make you watch it again if you don't see it.
VERY powerful stuff if you are willing (and able) to open your mind and your eyes to it.
I would even go as far to say that EVERYONE is really missing the quadruple entendre that is:
Small Axe = a tool used to shape, split and cut wood, to harvest timber, and also used as a weapon. Aside from the African proverb that means together we are strong the idiom was popularized by Bob Marley and the Wailers' song, "Small Axe". Still, the small axe is "ready to cut you down, sharpened to cut you down ... these are the words for my master" - symbolizing the overall vision of bringing change to the systems that have and continue to establish and maintain inequalities between races and color.
Small Ax = pronounced in a now perceived slang version of the word "ask" - it used to be the correct/acceptable way to ask for something. So ... a small ask is a simple, harmless, reasonable request extended from one person or entity to another. In context, that request (hidden, implied, and even obvious) is "treat us (black people) as equals". That really isn't too much to ask of anyone - just treat everyone the same no matter the color of their skin. It's a small ax ... or a small ask depending on where you come from.
Small Acts = which also sounds like Small Axe references the five films in this series. Like "acts" in a play these 5 stories tell their own story while, at the same time, collectively tell a larger one. So, each film, in themselves, is a small act.
Small Acts = an alternate meaning to "Small Acts" could also reference the series of small tasks done in kindness that one person does for another. If you look you can see these through the films and I would, therefore suggest, that a series of these good, kind small acts are the kindling to the larger, more challenging tasks to correct all that has been done incorrectly. When these random acts of kindness are no longer performed by a small segment of society but instead by everyone AND these acts are no longer random but are unconscious then, and only then, will we be that much closer to being an equal society where people can be who they are without judgement and/or prejudice.