Ailey movie review (2022) | Little White Lies

Ailey

07 Jan 2022 / Released: 07 Jan 2022

Words by Marina Ashioti

Directed by Jamila Wignot

Starring Alvin Ailey

A man striking a dramatic pose with arms raised, wearing only white trousers against a plain background.
A man striking a dramatic pose with arms raised, wearing only white trousers against a plain background.
4

Anticipation.

Eager to be immersed in this Sundance-acclaimed portrait of a groundbreaking choreographer.

3

Enjoyment.

Quite incongruous for a documentary on dance to commit so heavily to static talking heads.

3

In Retrospect.

Poeticism ebbs and flows throughout Wignot’s impressonistic mediation, fluctuating in parts.

This ten­der and affect­ing doc­u­men­tary on a vision­ary of con­tem­po­rary dance offers a glimpse of the man behind the genius.

As much as cel­e­brat­ing Black joy, com­mu­ni­ty and resis­tance, Alvin Ailey’s chore­og­ra­phy embod­ied the depths of col­lec­tive grief, relo­cat­ing protest from the streets to the stage.

Afflict­ed with men­tal ill­ness and sen­tenced to the lone­ly space of cre­ation, Ailey’s ambi­tion was as tena­cious as it was all-con­sum­ing, and as a result of homo­pho­bia, he became an increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed fig­ure. This strug­gle to find inti­ma­cy guides Jami­la Wignot’s doc­u­men­tary, who care­ful­ly con­tex­tu­alis­es his secre­tive nature against a repres­sive his­tor­i­cal backdrop.

Annuk­ka Lilja’s art­ful edit­ing melds vin­tage black-and-white footage and audio record­ings to mes­meris­ing effect. Through a trea­sure trove of pre­vi­ous­ly undis­cov­ered audio record­ings, Ailey’s per­son­al input – which he recounts with unpar­al­leled ten­der­ness – is weaved into a nar­ra­tive of biog­ra­phy, per­for­mance and social his­to­ry. His nar­ra­tion exudes a lyri­cism that match­es his flu­id vocab­u­lary of move­ment that rev­o­lu­tionised the land­scape of con­tem­po­rary dance.

Per­haps in a for­mal attempt to emu­late Ailey’s flu­id body of work, the time­line becomes mud­dled, with some sequences strug­gling to keep view­ers ori­ent­ed in time. To its cred­it, the film is faced with the impos­si­ble task of under­stand­ing a noto­ri­ous­ly closed-off sub­ject, and has no qualms in mak­ing trans­par­ent its frus­tra­tion in its inabil­i­ty to probe deeper.

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