EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS - Mark Reviews Movies

Exhibiting Forgiveness, Roadside Attractions

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 17, 2024

Forgiveness is among the most difficult of virtues, and writer/director Titus Kaphar, an artist making his feature debut, understands and examines that reality in Exhibiting Forgiveness. It's the story of a family torn apart by addiction and abuse in the past, and in the present, the film is about whether or not such actions can be forgiven and, if so, to what extent they can or should be.

Kaphar's screenplay is blunt about these subjects, ideas, and questions in a way that sometimes makes it dramatically repetitive, since the characters openly and repeatedly address the same topics over and over as they dissect their histories and discuss what's to be done about the past now. Even so, that frankness is refreshing, because it means these characters actually do talk about the things that have mattered to them for decades and will continue to matter for the foreseeable future. The honesty on display here is worth the repetition and Kaphar's occasional diversions from the drama at hand.

Initially, it's the story of La'Ron (John Earl Jelks), a homeless man who spends his days scavenging for food from the garbage, washing cars in the parking lot of a liquor store to earn some cash, and sleeping whenever and wherever he can. We can see the man has been through a lot just by looking at him, and Kaphar develops immediate sympathy with this character by way of his appearance, a selfless act of trying to defend his shopkeeper friend from an armed robber, and the silent soulfulness of Jelks' performance, which only expands in depth as the character makes a big change to his life.

All of that happens in the background and off-screen in the story, which shifts to an artist named Tarrell (André Holland), who has had some professional success of late with a well-received show of some of his pieces. His personal life seems ideal, too, since he's married to musician Aisha (Andra Day) and the couple have a young son named Jermaine (Daniel Berrier). The couple is affectionate with each other and respectful of each other's work, and as a father, Tarrell is attentive, patient, and loving.

It's important to note the quality of these relationships, if only because Tarrell has nightmares of his own familial past—flashes of imagery suggesting pain and violence that make breathing a struggling in his sleep and, at one point, have him reflexively rise to start hitting a wall. He doesn't want to talk about these dreams or their foundation in his childhood, but after leaving home with his family to help his mother move, Tarrell's mother Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) more or less forces him to confront his past.

That's because La'Ron, who turns out to be Tarrell's estranged father, has returned. He's cleaned up, having taken up a temporary residence and started the process of recovery with the help of a support group, and wants to be a part of his family again. Tarrell refuses even the notion of such a thing, but after Joyce pleads with her son to just listen to La'Ron and consider forgiving him, Tarrell can't refuse his mother.

The rest of the story essentially amounts to a series of conversations between Tarrell and his family members. In Aisha, he finds support to take his time, even if she's shocked to discover that her husband's father is alive (Tarrell assumed the first time she'd meet his father was when La'Ron was "in a casket"). In Joyce, he hears the insistence that Tarrell should forgive his father, because it's the right thing to do for family and in her religious beliefs—beliefs Tarrell no longer entirely shares, if at all.

The centerpiece discussions, of course, are between Tarrell and La'Ron, who invites his son to the basement where he has been living, again makes it plain that he wants his son's forgiveness and to be in Tarrell's life, and, at Tarrell's request, explains how and why he started using and then abusing drugs. That explanation eventually reveals La'Ron's relationship with his own father, a man pulled a pistol on his wife and also aimed it at La'Ron when he told his parents he was going to be a father. La'Ron tells the story in such a matter-of-fact way that it stuns Tarrell, who cannot comprehend why La'Ron would dismiss such actions as those of a merely "complicated" man.

There's a lot more talking, as Aisha reaches her limits of staying in a cramped motel room, Joyce continues to plead La'Ron's case to Tarrell, and the father himself seems incapable of understanding why his son is angry about how he raised Tarrell, when La'Ron's own father was so much worse and Tarrell's life turned out fine—in spite or because of his old man. Some harrowing flashbacks, showing a young Tarrell (played by Ian Foreman) working with his father well-past the point of abuse and discovering how La'Ron reacted to Joyce's protests, make the central conflict here even more explicit.

It's not just about the father-son dynamic, either. This is a conflict within Tarrell, who can see that his father has changed, can hear the man come close to some revelations about abuse and trauma and why that kind of parental example cannot stand, and can even sympathize with why La'Ron became the father and man he did for so long. Are those enough for Tarrell to forgive La'Ron?

Holland's performance is a reserved and internalized one—as much about Tarrell's quiet reactions to and processing of information as the character's own arguments for his position. It anchors Exhibiting Forgiveness in a degree of emotional authenticity that elevates already-effective material.

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