Top of the Heap

 1972, d. Christopher St. John - Criterion Channel

Part of Criterion's Beyond Blacksploitation programming.

A Youtube Black culture critic/essayist I follow, F.D. Signifier, said recently "There's no such thing as a 'conversation' about the Black experience between a Black person and a non-Black person...what that is is a lecture. What that is is me telling you about the Black experience...." which isn't to say that there can't or shouldn't be engagement, asking questions, receiving answers, but that's not a coversation, or a back-and-forth about the Black experience. He noted that just as he can't speak on certain experiences of white or queer or trans people, a non-Black person cannot speak to the Black experience.

What this all is to say is that Top of the Heap is most definitely a film about a Black experience (saying 'the Black experience' assumes it's a singular experience which doesn't seem right) and while I picked up on much of what the character George (writer/director Christopher St. John) is going through emotionally and culturally, I'm certain I'm missing much of the subtext (I'm still parsing out what the astronaut fantasy sequences are exactly conveying).

George is a police officer, but he's struggling with his position. His common refrain is "I can do whatever the hell I want" but it's a defense mechanism, both daring someone to tell him otherwise and also to convince himself that he's not as stuck or trapped as he feels.

George's mother has just passed away, and George can't face it. He's also just been passed over for a promotion to captain, which has almost completely disengaged him from his job, but he still can't help but be so straight-laced. He and his partner bust a couple of low level drug dealers who are just having a roast chicken dinner with some cocaine and counting their money. They infer a bribe to let them go invoking brotherhood but George goes into a deep sweat internally deliberating the choice between an inherently racist system and the job he's sworn to do to uphold it. The men completely disregard any authority he thinks he has and things come to a head until his partner turns up.

He's cheating on his wife with a young, broke lounge singer, and it's clear his wife is still looking for some semblance of love or affection from him, but finding little. His daughter, now thirteen, was busted making out with a boy by her mom, and George doesn't see the big deal (until he comes across an arrested 13-year-old prostitute which causes him to reconsider his almost feminist stance on female sexuality and discovery, and is a real unfortunate backtrack the film makes), and then he finds her high on pills. Between his job and his philandering he doesn't have time for his daughter (this is the only scene we see her in) but his guilt sends him out to perform vigilante justice beating the ever living shit out a drug dealer (not even necessarily the one who sold his daughter the pills).

There are multiple instances where George is disrespected by white people (including a tense encounter with another police officer) until they learn he's a cop and then he receives instant respect. Conversely, Black people treat him like a brother until they find out he's a cop, and then he's an other... working for The Man.

The film here is largely the stress George faces in his duality, hating his job despite being praised for how good he is at it, and that he doesn't seem to fit in with his community. In his waking dreams, he's an astronaut, a captain (the rank that passed him by), untethered to his daily existence, and yet, still unable to escape the Earth, his mission shot for the cameras in a studio warehouse. In the end, he's warned both in his real life and in his waking dream to get out, but where he was successful in his dream, he fails in life. The weight of his badge and gun, family, his choices, gravity all holding him down.

The film opens with George wading into a small scale riot between protesters and construction workers, he gets the cool close-up-from-below and a spunky "bullshit" line reading with a horn sting behind him as introduction. This is a fake-out of badassery that betrays the pensive, thoughtful film that's to follow, and is quickly subverted as he is tossed into the mud and a piss-filled balloon explodes on his face.

The music of the film is not great, and the dubbing is out of sync most of the time (and maybe even trying to correct the dialogue in post), so there are a lot of weaknesses in the production, but the story breaks through boldly and makes for compelling viewing. The narrative structure, as a tour of George's psyche, is practically flawless.

As engaged as I was, I still couldn't help but feel there's a part of this that I'm missing, aspects of the narrative that pass me by. But, if that's the case, it's because they're not meant for me to understand or relate to, and that's more than ok. This isn't a conversation for me to take part in, and it's not even a lesson. This movie isn't trying to approach or explain itself to a white audience. It shouldn't have to, and it doesn't care to. And it wouldn't work nearly as well if it did.