One of my favourite things about Sinners is the use of colour to symbolize belonging and home vs assimilation or separation from self and the environment.
When Annie is in her home, connected to her ancestors by practicing Hoodoo and speaking Yoruba to the man she loves , her skin tone blends into the earthy, natural tones of her home. Who she is, is not at odds with her environment . She even wears the same deep blue as Smoke
When Sammie is singing the blues, filled with passion and surrounded by the love and joy of his community, his shirt matches the warm yellow glow of the lights in the Juke Joint. He fits in perfectly and effortlessly
Delta Slim is the embodiment of The Blues, every part of him is harmonious with the dark brown walls of the Juke Joint
In contrast, the church walls and the clothing of the congregation reflect the assimilating influence of whiteness to the land and people, the false binary of black and white. The pop of green of the wild, natural world beyond the stark walls stands out as a symbol of freedom and untamed passion. There is no warmth or vibrancy in this place that demands Sammie give up his music, his voice, his culture.
And this split dividing the twins is interesting to me. Stack shown with the open air behind him, foreshadowing his eventual escape and freedom from the Jim Crow South. His red hat, tie and car reflecting the blood spilled and his vampirism as the only means he has for leaving this world of division.
Then Smoke on the right is shown contained within the Juke Joint, his home and his metaphorical casket as this will be his final resting place with Annie. His blue hat and shirt are symbolic of the sky/spirit world where he will spend eternity, unnaturally separated from his brother
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
maneee me personally...the way mary pretended like she didn't know she was white passing in Sinners really pissed me off 😭.
now girl you know you look bout white as all hell and got the nerve to be at the train station just HOLLERIN bout how Stack blew your back out, knowing FULL WELL he can be lynched for some shit like that! She aint love that man fr cause the way she CONSISTENTLY acted a fool with him in public could have got him in jail or WORSE fooling with them white folks in the 1930s!!!!
and I don't wanna hear NATHAN about her genuinely thinking she looked recognizably black, because she turned around and tried to play both sides with remmick and them LATER THAT SAME NIGHTTT🗣️ she oughta be so shame
Okay, but you can't tell me Wunmi's titties aren't Michael B Jordan's new happy place. Like every time he has a bad day, he's going to be thinking about just burying his face in them thangs and escaping the world
I think Sammie would have definitely tried to marry Pearline. The woman who saved his life, who told him to run, whos last song was one of pain as they killed their nightmare.
Sammie naming his place after Pearline, well, I just feel like that was his way of marrying her.
Of being able to play beside her again, to look up and honor her as he played his heart out. Sammie ran off with his blues and he kept Pearline in his heart the entire time. He didn't open a church, he opened an altar to those Sinners who needed music as much as they needed holy.
I also think those three scars he left with can mean so much. Of the three things he lost that night:
The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit.
Smoke, Stack, and Pearline.
I don't know, I'm still processing things 🤷🏾♀️ it was such a good movie 😭
This particular scene broke my heart in so many ways.
The way he tried to steady his hands to roll for himself - likely for the first time in decades since Stack did it for him - and has to accept that he can’t do it. Not without stack’s help.
How he rips the protection necklace Annie gave him off (I know it has a different name - so sorry I can’t remember what she called it!) as a physical sign that he has no interest in surviving what’s next.
Annie showing up and telling him to put out the smoke he had desperately needed so he could hold their daughter again?!?!
A literal puddle of tears
MBJ really cooked in this scene because ya girl was UNDONE. The action was amazing but it was the emotion he displayed, the flashbacks to earlier in the day from his perspective (or was that when Sammie and stack reunited or were there flashbacks in both - I need to see this again lol). It was one of MBJ’s best scenes in any movie he’s ever done. Truly phenomenal.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Watched the Sinners Movie and I loved every minute of it.
Listen, listen, I know that the movie is filled with beautiful and China-fine men of color, but I loved all the already established romantic relationships. I don’t even want to imagine replacing any of the women or men!
Like Annie and Smoke, Mary and Stack, Bo and Grace, Sammie and Pearline!! The only way I’m getting any of them is if I’m squeezed in between them like a sandwich. I honestly loved all the interactions each of the couples had, especially Annie and Smoke.
Cough move over Smoke Cough
So unfortunately my OC brain went to the manipulative white man… let me do the walk of shame after this post.
So here are my sinners OC thoughts that I want to share and perhaps hear some other opinions.
Optional TLDR at the end, but I recommend reading at least the last section
WARNING: SUPER FUCKING LONG
One of my characters is Eithne, a werewolf based character.
(A vampire and a werewolf… I know, I know, I’m very original.)
History and Mythos crafting:
I thought her up as I was reading into the Werewolves of Ossory, specifically the one myth in The King’s Mirror when St. Patrick came to Ireland to convert the locals and ended up asking God to punish the locals for drowning out his sermons with wolf howls, to which they were cursed to become man-eating werewolves every 7 years.
Except I thought I would tweak the mythos just a bit to include earlier lore of werewolves, specifically pre-christian.
I changed it so that the myth that was related to St. Patrick would be an early case of syncretism, the wide spreading Christian faith’s explanation to the already existing Pagan belief of werewolves and why they existed.
The choice from Christians to be explicit with the “man-eating” part was to add to the bad view on pagans and also create the environment and mindset then later led to the extinction of wolves in Ireland and Angleland (England).
So in this mythos, the werewolves in Ireland originally existed as a normal part of celtic society, being benign or benevolent supernatural figures that existed in rural parts of the Isle. They would accept a small offering of grain or goats milk from farmers in exchange to not attack or eat their sheep or other livestock.
But after Christianity rolled into town, more negative myths and legends were spread about the werewolves and wolves in general. So by the 12th century the view of werewolves had turned completely sour, and coupled with the spread of anti-pagan sentiment, the Werewolves of Ossory retreated further and further into the unpopulated areas of Ireland or attempted to live among humans while ordinary wolves were hunted to extinction in 1786.
Mythos explanation over, moving on to Eithne as a character.
She is practically as old as Remmick, as her name is pre-christian. Even being a bit older, since I can imagine her being born in the early 5th century, only a few years before St. Patrick arrived in Ireland (432 AD).
(And yes, the Werewolves of Ossory in the Sinners mythos are semi-immortal. AKA they age suuuuper slowly.)
Unlike other werewolves, she decided to both live among humans but also stay at a distance. Basically, while she didn’t retreat into the mountainous regions and stayed in decently populated areas, she didn’t interact with many people. She was considered a young woman of little words and was only ever seen tending to her sheep or taking care of the land around her home.
I can imagine her life in Ireland was manageable up until the Norman Conquest and then it quickly got worse.
Then the Tudor Reconquest.
Then the Cromwellian conquest. Fuck that guy in particular.
Nearing the end of the 19th century, Eithne was more or less done with humanity and seriously just wanted to go somewhere she wasn’t going to be bothered.
Because living through nearly 1400 years, too many invasions, conquests, pagan persecution, catholic persecution, intentional starvation and genocide, and finally breaking and eating people... makes you tired with humanity at least a little bit.
Nearing the 20th century, Eithne finally hops on a boat and lands in North America.
Shenanigans ensue and Remmick ends up walking in on Eithne eating a guy that tried to assault her. Remmick also hears Eithne curse in Irish Gaelic as she is hears his footsteps.
Sooo…
Eithne ends up getting the world’s most annoying stalker. Who ends up bothering her from New York to North Carolina to Boston to finally Mississippi.
Thoroughly sick of moving from place to place, Eithne finally got an isolated place in the Mississippi Delta and asked Remmick what he wanted.
His answer: A connection.
The rest is history.
Basically Eithne makes space in her life for a sad and manipulative vampire, who is so lonely he is willfully ignorant of how fake his short lived hivemind communities really are and is able to reminisce on the Isle they both love and share. They also enjoy shit talking on Catholicism, Cromwell, and England as a whole.
With how well this movie makes characters and relationships deeper both in story sense and history, I don’t think mine will even be half as good but I want to try!
Eithne and Remmick can be seen as an allegorical relationship between Irish Americans and native Irish people.
While Remmick isn’t necessarily Irish American, his disconnect with his pre-christian irish roots is similar to that of a 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant with their original culture. I’m assuming Remmick was at one point human and ended up transforming into a vampire, adding another level of separation from his ancestors. And I can’t help but think he hates that.
Remmick is something that isn’t even tangentially related to his culture, in a way that he could be if he was something like an Abhartach. He feels bastardized. He is completely isolated, knowing what his home looks and feels like but his roots aren't long enough to reach it.
Remmick is a being that has power over his oppressors but he is first and foremost the furthest he can possibly be from his ancestors and his culture.
Compare that with Eithne.
While she is from (possibly) an earlier time in Ireland than Remmick, she doesn’t feel that same sense of loneliness and isolation. While sure, she misses the land she grew up in and the culture she knew as a child. She still has no real qualms about the lands of Ireland itself. She is quite literally an original Celtic creature from Ériu’s Land, she couldn’t be closer to Ireland spiritually if she tried. Eithne sees no point yearning for something she already has, a connection with her ancestors. They are with her all the time, no matter what land she is in.
She doesn’t understand Remmick’s need for community, his need to find his roots again. She can’t.
She can never truly grasp the depth of his desire to reconnect with his ancestors.
Eithne can empathize with it. But she fundamentally can’t understand it.
And also like Irish immigrants and native Irish, Remmick’s only comfort for the culture and past he knows is Eithne. The language he thought he would never hear again, the songs no one else can recall, and the dances that were outlawed for years. His only gateway is Eithne.
But once again there is that disconnect.
Eithne shares and indulges Remmick both out of love and joy for the culture but overall will never see things from his side.
__________________________________________
TLDR: Werewolf OC named Eithne not just for shipping but to also be an allegory for the disjointed relationship between Native Irishmen and Irish Immigrants.
When you realise that Mary being the one who turned Stack is lowkey a representation of how she (very much unintentionally) and their relationship would have gotten him killed at some point if they hadn't been turned/survived the attack by the KKK-
From the moment we first meet Mary, we very quickly realise that she isn't afraid to speak her mind. That she matches Stack in this regard and is part of the draw between them. However, her boldness comes with a LOT of danger. Mainly for the fact that she racially passes. It is also heavily implied that Mary speaks the way she does because she is often given more leeway compared to those she considers family based on her physical appearance alone. As a result of this, she often doesn't think much of the consequences because, typically, she doesn't receive any. It's why she was so comfortable approaching Remmick and his companions, why she was so sure that nothing untoward would happen because that was what she had experienced as a passing individual.
This subconscious tendency to say whatever she wants, when she wants, is the most prevalent in the scene where she encounters Stack for the first time since they had separated, very openly and LOUDLY speaking about the sexual aspects of their relationship in a place where even the mention of a black man LOOKING at a white woman for too long could end in that man's murder, could end in HER being thrown in JAIL for sleeping with someone outside of her presented race, and she did all that where there are law enforcement officers hanging around at any given point.
I don't doubt that Mary deeply loved Stack. She grew up with him, was likely his childhood sweetheart and was genuinely very hurt by how he chose to end it. And likely genuinely just wanted to find a way they could be together like how they used to. But if said relationship, before the events of the film, was filled with moments like that? I do not blame Stack for deciding that it would be safer for the BOTH of them to be apart rather than together, regardless of how much he loved + adored her.
I feel like in universe people would be used to and can come to appreciate Smoke's silence. he is not a man of many words, mainly actions. but Stack? when that yapping all star mf shuts up?? you better run. actually I don't even think that will help you 😭
