Mr. Church movie review & film summary (2016)

“Henry Joseph Church could have been anything he wanted,” Charlotte narrates in the opening scene. “He chose to cook. The secret, he said, was jazz.” We learn that Mr. Church has lots of secrets. He’s got secrets in his lemonade, in his grits and in his life. While he tells us the former two secrets, the latter one remains frustratingly unrevealed. Charlotte can’t get a single detail from Mr. Church about what he does after he leaves her house. Even after years of raising her, he won’t tell her any of his personal details, because if he does, the film cannot attempt to defend itself against the idea that Mr. Church is simply a Noble Negro with no autonomy of his own. His secrets “prove” his independence.

But Susan McMartin’s atrocious, offensive and cowardly script has no credible defense to employ. We never see Mr. Church with anyone but Charlotte, and the film is maddeningly vague about what he’s doing off-screen when he’s not with her. For example, when Charlotte moves in with Mr. Church, McMartin gives him daddy issues which manifest themselves whenever he comes in drunk after his visits to the mysterious Jelly’s Café. Beresford doesn’t even give Murphy screen time to visually enact these verbal tirades against his invisible dad; we see Charlotte listening to them in her room instead.

“Jelly’s Café had a reputation,” Charlotte tells us, which may be why Mr. Church is so afraid to mention he goes there. But what is that reputation? We never find out. I’ve got a theory that makes the movie even more offensive if I’m right (spoiler alert for the rest of this paragraph). On the surface, Jelly’s Café looks like an after-hours jazz club. It would be absurd if Mr. Church’s big, unmentionable secret is that he plays piano there, especially considering that the one personal detail he mentions in the film is that he’s a musician (plus, he plays piano for Charlotte in several scenes). I think Jelly’s Café is a gay establishment, and Mr. Church’s homosexuality is the big, scary Thing That Must Not Be Named. (At one point, Mr. Church drunkenly screams out to his dad “Don’t call me a fag!” and “Why did you put me out?!”) So not only does “Mr. Church” put a Black character in a retro role better suited for a film made in 1957, it does the same thing to a homosexual one.

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