DIRECTOR SHIFTS LENS

PORTRAIT PAINTED OF AMERICAN MILITARY FAMILY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

War and love and family make for strange bedfellows.

Director Denzel Washington paints the portrait of life’s gravest of misfortunes in A Journal for Jordan (2021).

Chante Adams plays, Dana Canedy, the daughter of a military veteran briefly smitten by Charles King at a chance meeting on her father’s birthday.

Canedy has separated herself from the transient military life by landing a dream job as a journalist for the New York Times.

Washington submerges the audience in a tragic foretelling during the opening scenes and then begins the narrative in the lonely past just prior to the Canedy and King meeting.

The path to love is not all rose pedal covered cobblestones as Washington explores solid foundations of stable relationships.

Social dysfunction does not destroy the couple’s happy future, but war fought across the ocean does.

Everything is oh so interesting at first while the journalist and the military sergeant set some ground rules. Washington uses the camera as a metaphor for the early embers of love by making everything so interesting and moving fast at first until realty sets in and everything must be slowed down for some serious negotiations.

The film does lag a bit at this point, but if the couple can make it through this phase of the relationship, the plot might get a bit more interesting.

A time lapse camera is used at one point to symbolize the racing thoughts of love birds by the riverside as the days begin to bend into one another.

But if you are hoping for happily everafter or even crushing military combat scenes that bring about an end to the relationship, keep looking. Washington uses a second narrative to show that something is missing in the present because of something that has happened in the past that the director has not told the audience about yet.

The narrative moves along well enough, but the plot reversal is a bit soft as the film moves from a romantic comedy into an uncomfortable inevitability.

Adams does a good job acting her part, and for most of the scenes her acting and the dialogue catch the camera’s attention, deservedly so.

Washington received an Oscar nomination for Best Motion Picture for Fences (2016), another portrait explaining African-American relationships in the context of family. Viola Davis picked up the Oscar for Best Performance in a Supporting Role.

Washington again develops a strong female performance, transitioning Adams from a path of loneliness to a cautionary journey of love as part of an American story about hardship.

Oscars are often few and far between, though.

The narrative device works well for the romantic comedy genre, but not so much for the tragedy section as the climactic conclusion bends a few heart strings only at the very end.

Adams can roll though, with scene transitions created by her acting talents and the balancing effect of the camera.

A Journal for Jordan is currently showing in theaters.