John Ridley's biopic digs into Shirley Chisholm's presidential campaign, but never goes deep enough on her. Our Shirley review:
Since 2016, we’ve all been more or less in agreement that we’re living in the worst timeline. Netflix’sof the same name) may leave you thinking that a far better alternate universe would be the one where congresswoman Shirley Chisholm actually got elected to the White House.
Chisholm, a former schoolteacher, became the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968. She served seven consecutive terms from 1969 to 1983. But Ridley’s film primarily focuses on Chisholm’s 1972 presidential campaign, which made her the first Black candidate for a major party nomination.
This isn’t an isolated incident—Chisholm’s refusal to bend to literally anyone damages her relationships with her staff, her advisors and Conrad , her husband of 19 years. Ridley clearly wants us to side with her every time, and while his film certainly has a point regarding the silencing of Black women’s voices, the people telling Shirley to behave like a politician arecorrect. It’s unlikely Chisholm ever would have had a real shot at the presidency in 1972 .
Chisholm’s relationship with her husband is also underdeveloped, which misses an opportunity to confront her steamrolling personality and the toll it takes on her interpersonal relationships . In the film, Conrad is a nice man, but ineffectual, failing to step up in cartoonishly stereotypical ways. In one scene, he falls asleep in front of the TV and fails to fix food for his tired wife when she gets back late from a campaign event.
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