{"id":20429,"date":"2022-06-03T03:32:03","date_gmt":"2022-06-03T07:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pley2win.com\/featured-news\/neptune-frost-review-a-bold-bizarre-afropunk-sci-fi-musical-adventure\/"},"modified":"2022-06-03T03:32:03","modified_gmt":"2022-06-03T07:32:03","slug":"neptune-frost-review-a-bold-bizarre-afropunk-sci-fi-musical-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pley2win.com\/?p=20429","title":{"rendered":"Neptune Frost review: a bold, bizarre Afropunk sci-fi musical adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This review of <\/em>Neptune Frost originally ran in conjunction with the film\u2019s premiere at the 2022 Sundance International Film Festival. It has been updated and republished for the film\u2019s release in theaters and virtual cinemas.<\/em><\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe you\u2019re asking yourself, WTF is this? Is it a poet\u2019s idea of a dream?\u201d <\/p>\n
These are the first words spoken by Neptune Frost, the eponymous protagonist of Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams\u2019 Afrofuturist musical, after a life-threatening motorbike collision, a miraculous revival, and a subsequent transformation. It\u2019s a reasonable question, the type viewers may ask themselves at several points throughout the course of the film\u2019s strange, circuitous odyssey.<\/p>\n
Filmed and set in and around Rwanda and Burundi, and executive produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Williams and Uzeyman\u2019s \u201canti-capitalist cyber-musical\u201d follows the story of itinerant intersex runaway Neptune Frost (portrayed at different times onscreen by Elvis Ngabo \u201cBobo\u201d and Cheryl Isheja). Spurred by the loss of their mother, they embark on a journey of self-discovery and re-invention. Dogged by an oppressive police force known only as \u201cThe Authority,\u201d Neptune is inexplicably drawn to a mysterious village cobbled together out of discarded e-waste, home to a small hacktivist enclave of revolutionaries and a coltan miner named Matalusa (Bertrand Ninteretse, a musician who performs as \u201cKaya Free\u201d), who\u2019s grieving the death of his younger brother Tekno. Together, the two form a bond that manifests as a power which threatens to upend the parasitic relationship between Western technology and the Global South. Also, there are musical numbers!<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a lot to throw at first-time viewers, let alone anyone unfamiliar with the fact that Neptune Frost<\/em> is technically an adaptation of Williams\u2019 2016 concept album MartyrLoserKing<\/em>, from which the film\u2019s score and soundtrack are heavily derived. At times befuddling, though adamantly mesmerizing, Neptune Frost<\/em> fuses searing anti-establishment lyricism with ethereal electronica to create a film and universe worthy of its place alongside the likes of Sun Ra\u2019s Space Is The Place<\/em> and 2019\u2019s I Snuck off the Slave Ship.<\/em> The costumes in Neptune Frost<\/em>, created by multidisciplinary artist Cedric Mizero, are particularly striking \u2014 they appropriate materials like discarded circuit boards, loose wiring, and even bicycle wheels to create designs that skew between eccentric and otherworldly.<\/p>\n
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Image: Sundance Institute<\/cite><\/p>\n
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Neptune Frost<\/em> isn\u2019t especially concerned about explaining itself. Instead, it\u2019s adamantly preoccupied with the nature of boundaries and how to hack them: It considers the delineations of class and capital, gender and sex, the powerful and the exploited, then addresses how these distinctions are formed and how they can be subverted, re-examined, and reimagined through the power of love, community, and an awareness of the value of one\u2019s labor in the global supply chain. Neptune Frost<\/em> probes the question of how we create a future beyond the pernicious parasitism of capitalism and colonialism. Put another way: How can one mold a new reality from out of the detritus of a world in ruin?<\/p>\n
As fascinating as these questions are, none of them would be engaging if not for the music which functions as Neptune Frost<\/em>\u2019s primary mode of exposition. The high-level concepts of the film\u2019s premise dovetail perfectly into the eclectic sonic palette of its Afropunk-inspired soundtrack. The tracks that originated from Williams\u2019 2016 album MartyrLoserKing<\/em> have been re-orchestrated and rearranged to conform to the film\u2019s context. The lyrics have been rewritten into a medley of Swahili and English, French and Kirundi, reflecting the global mindset at the heart of the film\u2019s focus, and a reflection of Rwanda\u2019s rich, varied cultural background. It isn\u2019t the type of musical where people will feel compelled to memorize and belt out the lyrics, but they\u2019re likely to find themselves nodding to the beat.<\/p>\n
Neptune Frost<\/em> is about the connection between joy and anger, between celebration and introspection, between a community and the individual. More pointedly, it\u2019s a movie about a disenfranchised collective who seize power of the technology their own lives and labor have assembled, and use it to give voice to a message that had gone unheard. \u201cTechnology was the name of my brother,\u201d Matalusa tells his fellow hackers in the film\u2019s final act. \u201cIt\u2019s technology that guides us today. They use our blood and sweat to communicate to one another, but have never heard our voice. Until now.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Image: Sundance Institute<\/cite><\/p>\n
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Though Neptune Frost<\/em>\u2019s message might initially come across as scattershot, it rings loud and clear by the film\u2019s climax, punctuated by an explosive act of state violence that, rather than succeeding in its effort to snuff out resistance, only seems to have further amplified it. Neptune Frost<\/em> is a bold, bizarre, and unflinchingly confident debut that prompts its audience to interrogate the very real human costs of the information age through the speculative lens of a future both vastly different and uncannily similar to our own. <\/p>\n
Neptune Frost<\/em><\/small> opens in New York on June 3, with a city-to-city rollout following. <\/small>Check the film\u2019s website<\/small> for local listings and upcoming showtimes.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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