The Under­ground Rail­road is a rev­e­la­to­ry telling of a com­plex tale

Col­son Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize-win­ning 2016 nov­el ​‘The Under­ground Rail­road’ tells the sto­ry of the secret routes and safe hous­es that exist­ed for enslaved African-Amer­i­cans to escape to the free states and Cana­da. It con­ceives of an alter­nate real­i­ty where a lit­er­al rail net­work actu­al­ly exists. We fol­low the teenaged Cora (Thu­so Mbedu) in her quest for free­dom from the numer­ous inven­tive cru­el­ties of America.

In a ground­break­ing 10-part series for Ama­zon Prime, Oscar-win­ner Bar­ry Jenk­ins mas­ter­ful­ly ele­vates this epic and com­plex tale. His adap­ta­tion is rev­e­la­to­ry. Often enough, depic­tions of the slave expe­ri­ence on screen have reduced slave own­ers to car­i­ca­ture arbiters of extreme vio­lence, unrecog­nis­ably cru­el and easy to dis­miss, with enslaved peo­ple pre­sent­ed as lit­tle more than recep­ta­cles of that violence.

In this series, Jenk­ins imbues every mem­ber of the prin­ci­ple cast with a pro­found human­i­ty that seeps into the bones. By syn­the­sis­ing the skills of his trust­ed reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tors, com­pos­er Nicholas Britell and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er James Lax­ton, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly the nuanced and com­pas­sion­ate per­for­mance from lead actress Mbedu, Jenk­ins is at the height of his pow­ers when flu­id­ly mutat­ing the style and tone of every scene to align with Cora’s brit­tle interiority.

In the first episode, Jenk­ins estab­lish­es exact­ly what this series will and won’t be. Open­ing with a sur­re­al and eerie sequence of Cora falling back­wards through time, we land on the Ran­dall plan­ta­tion in Geor­gia, dur­ing a mea­gre birth­day par­ty the enslaved are throw­ing among them­selves. Cae­sar (Aaron Pierre) asks Cora to run away with him. She dis­miss­es his request out of hand and rejoins the fes­tiv­i­ties that are abrupt­ly inter­rupt­ed by the slave own­ing Ran­dall brothers.

The thick South­ern accents, fan­cy canes and gen­er­al unease the Randall’s inspire is famil­iar. The rou­tine of mas­ters humil­i­at­ing the enslaved and pun­ish­ing them for not ful­fill­ing their role as jester, and the whip­ping that fol­lows – though obscured by night and shot at a dis­tance – is famil­iar. Jenk­ins rein­tro­duces us to this well trod­den path in the first instance, only to diverge from it entire­ly through­out the series.

Lat­er on in the episode we are intro­duced to Ridge­way (Joel Edger­ton), a slave catch­er whose rep­u­ta­tion pre­cedes him. He is return­ing a run­away to the Ran­dall plan­ta­tion with his accom­plice, 11-year-old freed slave Homer (Chase W Dil­lon), who at times appears like an appari­tion stand­ing at four feet tall in a three piece suit and bowler hat, tal­ly­ing up the price of fel­low Black peo­ple for his boss. Ter­rence Ran­dall (Ben­jamin Walk­er) is host­ing a tea par­ty, and the graph­ic flay­ing of the run­away pro­vides the entertainment.

An Eng­lish guest, Mr Churchill (Mark Ash­worth), remarks that he doesn’t under­stand how one can eat giv­en a man is being whipped in front of them. Since the Eng­lish export­ed their bru­tal­i­ty to the Caribbean, the prac­tis­es of the Ante­bel­lum South appear tacky by com­par­i­son. This is the first and last dis­play of gra­tu­itous vio­lence in the series, and it feels self-ref­er­en­tial to the on-screen for­mat as Jenk­ins makes it explic­it who these dis­plays are for: white spec­ta­tors, and they can either rev­el in or retract from them.

To tell a sto­ry about slav­ery for the screen, there will always be a ten­sion as to who this sto­ry and these images are for. Does the need to per­se­cute a mod­ern audi­ence over­ride the desire to present enslaved peo­ples with dig­ni­ty? Do fetishis­tic dis­plays of vio­lence achieve either of these goals, or do they become sala­cious fod­der for depraved racists? The body of the run­away is set on fire and the enslaved peo­ple on the plan­ta­tion are com­mand­ed to watch. The tea par­ty con­tin­ues. This is Cora’s cue to flee.

On Cora’s epic jour­ney, she encoun­ters the innu­mer­able inno­v­a­tive ways Black peo­ple are dehu­man­ised in Amer­i­ca. From episode to episode Jenk­ins isn’t draw­ing par­al­lels, but high­light­ing con­tin­u­a­tions of this treat­ment through to the present. At every new loca­tion (demar­cat­ed as stops on a secret train line), Cora is sus­pend­ed in hope, some­where between fear and faith. She swal­lows her grief and ten­ta­tive­ly embraces affec­tion where she can find it.

The rail­road itself occu­pies a lim­i­nal space: pitch black; only acces­si­ble via trap doors; and run­ning on its own sched­ule. At var­i­ous stages Cora uses it to slip through the clutch­es of forced ster­il­i­sa­tion, chris­t­ian fanati­cism, mur­der and recap­ture. We are told that Mabel (Sheila Atim), Cora’s moth­er, is the only per­son who has man­aged to evade Ridgeway’s recap­ture. The humil­i­a­tion she brought on his rep­u­ta­tion is what fuels his obses­sion with recap­tur­ing Cora. Mabel’s escape is what fuels Cora’s belief that free­dom is worth every­thing, even aban­don­ing your child for. Themes of matri­lin­eal trau­ma and heal­ing are del­i­cate­ly woven into the series, which arrives at a poet­ic and heart­break­ing resolution.

A more promi­nent theme in the series’ lat­ter episodes is its sear­ing con­dem­na­tion of Black cap­i­tal­ism, and the astute asser­tion that free­dom treat­ed as a com­mod­i­ty is not free­dom and, under cap­i­tal­ism, any notion of free­dom is neb­u­lous. The fact that The Under­ground Rail­road can be so broad in scope yet so for­mal­ly inti­mate and tex­tured is a tes­ta­ment to the skill of its cre­ator and cast. Jenk­ins has proven time and again that he is the mae­stro of fus­ing love and suf­fer­ing, acknowl­edg­ing that life can­not exist with the absence of either.

The series shows a deep respect for the lives and expe­ri­ences that would have been lived, with­out ever sani­tis­ing the hor­rif­ic con­di­tions that were endured. Mbedu chan­nels Cora’s spir­i­tu­al anguish with the kind of heart-wrench­ing sor­row and grit that most actors could only hope to achieve in their career.

Trau­ma and vio­lence exist in every people’s his­to­ry. What many works fail to realise is that recap­tur­ing the cru­el­ty doesn’t have to require retrau­ma­ti­sa­tion. Cora is more than the vio­lence met­ed out on her. She saves her­self time and time again because it’s recog­nised that the will of the enslaved had to be stronger than any of us can fathom.