In 1991, dashcam footage of four Los Angeles Police Department officers assaulting African-American motorist Rodney King made worldwide news; the next year, the acquittal of those officers sparked the most devastating riots in US history. Sacha Jenkins' 2017 documentary Burn, Motherfucker, Burn! explores the complicated race relations in LA in the decades leading up to the 1992 riots, beginning with the 1965 Watts riots and using the Black Lives Matter movement as a framing device for the contemporary legacy of 1992.
This documentary for US cable TV network Showtime I think gets as much right as it gets wrong. Jenkins' approach in both how he conducts the interviews and aesthetically traces the events in question is appropriately restrained and adequately objective, and it doesn't fall back on pop culture references from any of the time periods to jog our memories or to legitimise Jenkins' coverage of the events. But as it progressed, I found it lingered on numerous points for too long, certainly long after they'd been made, and that really diminished its power and emotional effect. It also has a few animated scenes that I found rather jarringly reminiscent of Brett Morgen's documentaries; I love those, but in employing that similar technique here I felt Jenkins was compromising his own directorial vision.
Overall, Jenkins' film engaged me as a cinematic history lesson, but did not rivet me as a documentary. I'm afraid for me, Burn, Motherfucker, Burn! fizzles out just before it catches fire. 6/10.
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