Directed by Barry Jenkins
Follow young Cora’s journey as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. After escaping her Georgia plantation for the rumored Underground Railroad, Cora discovers no mere metaphor, but an actual railroad full of engineers and conductors, and a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil.
Barry Jenkins Brad Pitt Sara Murphy Dede Gardner Adele Romanski Richard Heus Jeremy Kleiner Mark Ceryak Colson Whitehead
El ferrocarrill subterráneo, 地下鉄道 自由への旅路, A Estrada Subterrânea, ทางลับ ทางทาส, Підпільна залізниця, El ferrocarril subterráneo, Подземная железная дорога, The Underground Railroad: Os Caminhos para a Liberdade, Underground Railroad, El Ferrocarril Subterráneo, La ferrovia sotterranea, 地下铁道, A föld alatti vasút, Kolej podziemna, 언더그라운드 레일로드, 地下鐵道, Підземна залізниця, Podzemní železnice, מחתרת המסילה, Yeraltı Demiryolu, Den underjordiska järnvägen, 地下鉄道 ～自由への旅路～, Maanalainen rautatie, Podzemna železnica
from my latest at vulture:
“It is a masterwork that puts into the spotlight the sheer power and communion that can be found with visual storytelling. This is a series not so much witnessed but felt.”
I went deep and personal with this digging into the visual and sonic grammar, familial history, and why i found cora to be a cipher. hope this resonates.
A monumental reimagining of American history, Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2016 novel is a harrowing and rhapsodic journey through a still-echoing past. Weaving together historical fiction with moments of magical realism, The Underground Railroad is a full sensory immersion into the world of Cora (Thuso Mbedu), who, fleeing slavery, embarks on a treacherous quest for freedom—and is menaced by violence, supported by a clandestine community fighting for liberation, and haunted by the people she loses along the way. With images of searing power and stirring poetry, Jenkins delivers an epic saga of survival and resilience that pushes the limited-series format to new heights of cinematic transcendence.
Our edition arrives on June 25, 2024. To learn more or pre-order, visit Criterion.com.
In Barry Jenkins’ 10-hour historical fantasy miniseries The Underground Railroad, regret is generational, as easily passed down in a family as eye color or hair texture. The Underground Railroad, adapted by the Moonlight director from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2016 novel, takes place in antebellum Georgia. Yet it’d be a mistake to call the series a slave narrative. There’s only pain and suffering in a genre originally constructed to end slavery by explaining the horrors of plantation life to Northern white readers.
That gaze leapt from literature’s pages to dominate contemporary movie screens in films like Amistad, 12 Years a Slave, The Birth of a Nation, and Antebellum. Jenkins eliminates that gaze, using slavery as the canvas for a journey…
Before seeing this series, I remembered how many people who had watched it complained about how unjust it was that the major award had completely disregarded this miniseries. And, while I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories, I think it was kept out because, deep down, they knew that if they paid attention to it, it would be extremely difficult for them not to give it all the prizes, which would be unfair to the other shows.
The Effect
Indeed, what Barry Jenkins and team have accomplished with this brilliant 10-hour production is something few have succeeded in the decades and decades since cinema and then television came into our lives. The impact this series had on me over time…
A stunning and heartbreaking masterpiece that reorients and subverts the typical visual grammar and narrative approach of the cinematic slavery epic.
i truly don't even know how to begin to put this journey into words, what barry jenkins has crafted here is nothing short of phenomenal.
the direction, the score and the cinematography (to no surprise at all with it being from barry and his trusty companions) come together to create a union so deeply powerful that i was left with full body chills countless amounts of times. that score has instantly joined the ranks alongside beale street as one of my all time favourites. however, i think it is the performances that truly stood out to me the most. a large majority of the cast here were new to me and every single person blew me away. each actor, no…
hard not to worry when a guy as talented as jenkins goes from a movie like moonlight straight into working for amazon. but man this is pretty major, as dense with critique as it is rich with feeling. it is a little clunky in places (the music choices that end each episode largely work, but the seemingly po-faced "this is america" needle drop at the end of chapter 9 robs a significant moment of some of its power) but when its moments of dreamlike ambiguity collide with deliberately prescient anachronism, well, there's just not many other works like it. so so blessed to have been able to see this in a theater, where its images couldn't be ruined by streaming compression.
Lyrical, stunning, & enriched by bold metaphorical imagery, Barry Jenkins’ THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is his best work yet. An epic & important tale, it’s explored through an emotionally intimate gaze to result in a masterwork that deserves to be known as a landmark for the medium.
Nicholas Britell’s incredible score is a highlight too. With this, Moonlight, The King, Succession, If Beale Street Could Talk, and more, he has become one of my favorite composers of the modern era and I can’t wait to see what he does next as well!
I didn’t want to just write this off and ripped the trauma bandaid to get it done. It’s beautifully shot and extremely picturesque in every frame, well acted with decently constructed storytelling. Unfortunately, I do not believe this exists to serve me, or any black people in any way. It’s misguided traumacore that’s not offering anything new. My fists were clenched the entire time and though I found specific moments to be incredibly powerful and moving, they were few and far between. I’m tired of seeing black bodies brutalized for the sake of ‘educational entertainment’ and I hope Barry Jenkins, talented as he is, can use all his vision and gifts and look to the future eventually.
More on this…
how do i break it to barry jenkins i stopped watching because i was more hooked on too hot to handle
This entire series is extremely hard to digest. It’s hard to watch, hard to talk about and hard to think about. But not at any point did it feel exploitive or gratuitous. Terrible things happened to good people and as much as I wanted to be angry at what happened I know the reality might’ve been worse. The surrealism was excellent, the cinematography was beautiful and the writing was phenomenal as well. I wanted to take this down a star because I thought some episodes meandered but I don’t feel like I’m done with this. There’s so much varied storytelling here, so much to discover through reading and everything. If I could give this four and 3/4s of a star…
Barry Jenkins brings to life the achingly beautiful words of Colson Whitehead in this staggering and sublime cinematic odyssey. It’s ten masterfully crafted hours where you can find so much love and passion behind every frame: from James Laxton’s vivid, poetic images to the enchanting soundscape of singing cicadas and rustling leaves—only elevated by Nicholas Britell’s soul-stirring score. Jenkins unifies all of these elements to craft a series so heart-wrenching in its depiction of the atrocities of American slavery, but one that, instead of reveling in constant violence and trauma, chooses to embrace the fantastical grandeur of its epic narrative and create true cinematic poetry. Barry Jenkins has made a genuinely astounding ode to his ancestors. Essential viewing.
