Black lives matter, including those of vampires: 'The Sinners' against the Oscar curse

BarcelonaThis is called revaluing a brand: Warner, awaiting acquisition by Netflix, It has swept the nominations for the 2026 Oscars. The sinners, with 16, and One battle after anotherWith 13 films each, these two are destined to dominate the headlines on March 16th. For the moment, The sinnersThe film, directed by Ryan Coogler and available on HBO, can already boast a title: it's the most nominated film in Oscar history. Hollywood has decided to support a film directed and starring mostly African Americans, and which tells an African American story. Because Black lives matter, including those of vampires. The challenge is to turn the nominations into awards and avoid the curse that has plagued films like The turning point (1977), The color purple (1985) and American Hustle (2013), which ended up with zero nominations despite leading the pack; the first two with 11, and the other with 10. Or not to fall victim to another curse, that of Martin Scorsese, who has seen three of his films that started with 10 nominations go without an award: Gangs of New York (2002), The Irishman (2019) and The Killers of the Moon (2023).

What a story!The sinnersActually, there are several. One is about two twin brothers (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who, in 1932, at the end of Prohibition, return to the Mississippi Delta after making their fortune in Chicago by swindling the Italian and Irish mafias. It's a noir story, then, set against the backdrop of migration from the South to the North, where Delta blues became electric and cotton field workers became factory workers. The brothers, who have traveled the opposite route to open a club in territory controlled by the Ku Klux Klan, are reunited with their younger cousin, an aspiring blues musician.

The sinners It also tells a story of music, one that begins with the legend of Robert Johnson making a pact with the devil at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere and continues to the present day. One of the film's most interesting scenes illustrates this evolution, encompassing jazz, soul, rock, and hip hop. Another scene presents a battle between Black and white music, a struggle that positions blues and European-rooted folk music as the origin of American music (as always, with the Native American contribution remaining off-screen).

The Devil's Music

Within the musical narrative, Coogler is very skillful at inserting the character diabolical From popular music: the devil, thirsty for music, strives to share his knowledge with humans and at the same time steal their souls. In European tradition, this would be the legend of the tritone, the dissonant interval that some called diabolus in musica. All of this forms part of the dialectic between the music of God and the music of men, which in The sinners It shows a connection between gospel (the daylight and the plantation church) and blues (the twelve nocturnal bars and the club where they dance). The film, incidentally, also suggests that even the devil is gripped by nostalgia and that's why he prefers acoustic blues to electric blues.

The sinners It has even more stories. For example, the story of fiction as a restorer of historical justice. As Quentin Tarantino did in Damned bastards By burning down the Nazi dome in a movie theater, Ryan Coogler gives the protagonists the opportunity to destroy an entire chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. This direct action against racism is consistent with what other African American filmmakers like Jordan Peele have done, who in Let me outAlso employing genre film conventions, it depicted a revenge plot against a group of racists. In both cases, the violence is pure survival. Thus, both Coogler and Peele propose a narrative that doesn't need to tell grand Black stories with the dramatic flair of epic narratives, but rather chooses less solemn stories and tells them using the tools of genre cinema, much like what happened with the films of the blaxploitation from the seventies but transcending a specific commercial and aesthetic niche.

The sinners It is a film with a powerful and stimulating story, connected to other vampire adventures such as Open until the early hours (Robert Rodríguez, 1996) and Vampires (John Carpenter, 1998), in which those who fight the forces of evil are a group of very dignified rescuers who don't have much in common with traditional gothic heroes. It also includes a couple of cinematically very successful moments, especially when there's music and dancing involved, although it doesn't take full advantage of some potential, such as the look The film is impressive in its portrayal of the protagonists and some subplots, and it could often push the boundaries of editing and camera work. In any case, it works precisely because of these different superimposed layers, allowing it to be enjoyed by those with diverse aesthetic and narrative sensibilities. That's the magic of music.

A tradition with other examples

This is not the first time that Oscar nominations have recognized Black stories directed and starring African Americans. 12 Years a Slave (2013), by the British of Caribbean origin Steve McQueen, was nominated for 9 awards and won 3, including best film. Moonlight Barry Jenkins's 2016 film received eight nominations and won the Oscar for Best Picture. In another Jenkins film, Beale Street Blues (2018), which received 3 nominations, Regina Park was recognized as best supporting actress. Lee Daniels managed to Precious (2009) was nominated in 6 categories and received 2 awards. Jordan Peele won an award for best screenplay with Let me out, which had 4 options in four categories. Boyz n the Hood (1991), by John Singleton, garnered 2 nominations, the same number that Spike Lee received with Do the right thing (1989) and Malcolm X (1992). Spike Lee, the great director of film noir, won an honorary Oscar in 2016 before winning one for a film: the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for Infiltrator in the KKK (2018), which had 6 nominations. Because the history of the Oscars is full of injustices.

How The sinners, the movie The color purple (1985), by Steven Spielberg, also a noir story but directed by a white Jew, was the most nominated, with 11 nominations, the same as Out of Africaby Sydney Pollack. But the Academy left Spielberg without a reward: zero awards while Pollack's film took home seven.

Ryan Coogler, who beforeThe sinners he had directed films such as Creed. The Legend of Rocky (2015), Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda forever (2021), has already had good experiences at the Oscars. Creed It had one nomination (for actor Sylvester Stallone), and the two Marvel films about the African hero received 5 nominations each; the first won 3 Oscars and the second 1. Now it's the turn ofThe sinnersIf he avoids the curse, he can continue making history.