‘Sing Sing’ Review: Colman Domingo Gives one of the Year’s Best Performances
Colman Domingo cements himself as one of the best actors working today through his deeply moving portrayal of John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield.
In the opening moments of Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing, we see John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield (Colman Domingo) recite a monologue before the audience to a rapturous standing ovation. The movie then cuts to Divine G inside the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison where he is held for a life sentence. We progressively learn that Divine G was falsely arrested and charged with a murder he didn’t commit and, despite his multiple appeals to reverse his sentence, is doing time inside Sing Sing without complaints.
In fact, he’s even helped shepherd a theater program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts with Brent Buell (Paul Raci). The program helps inmates not only control their emotions through performance but also makes them forget that they are currently serving prison time so they can escape from the confines of the Sing Sing walls.
The troupe is now looking for their next play to produce for the following season. As one inmate, Clarence ‘Divine Eye’ Maclin (playing himself), complains to Brent that most of the plays have been depressing Shakespeare soliloquies, the group is encouraged to pursue a comedy, which will travel back (and forwards) in time through Egypt, the Gladiator era, and even meet Freddy Krueger along the way. It makes no sense, but the point of the theater troupe isn’t necessarily about creating a cohesive play but about bonding with their fellow inmates and becoming better selves.
That’s what Divine G is trying to teach Divine Eye, who has a hard time trusting not only the leader of RTA but the troupe itself. At first, a conflict develops because Divine G wants to play Hamlet, while Divine Eye also auditions for the role. The latter ultimately gets the part, but Divine G does not complain and is happy to play the character he is assigned to. However, Divine Eye does not like that Divine G has more responsibilities inside the troupe and has difficulty getting along with other inmates.
In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, Divine Eye rejects Divine G’s guidance because he feels he only has to fend for himself. We learn he carries a knife in his pocket, quickly raising the tension between the two. What’s most impressive about the scene is not how Domingo is one of the best actors working today but how Kwedar lets the inmates who were at Sing Sing tell their stories. Divine Eye is not an actor, nor are most of the people who are part of the movie’s main cast.
Rather, Kwedar makes the smart decision to give the former inmates their time in the spotlight and express themselves. Each non-actor who is part of the cast gets their time to shine, including one specific scene where one member of the troupe tells Divine Eye to change his attitude after he is offended by someone walking past his mark. This prison isn’t about one person doing their time but about everyone. And when such an establishment is offered the opportunity to have activities like theater, one must understand that they cannot do a thing to mess it up. Parts like these are portrayed by the non-actors with so much pain and humanity that we immediately attach ourselves to their stories because they’re not made up, nor are they sensationalized for the camera.
Each testimony the inmates tell is a real and lived-in experience we will never take away from them. Such emotional power feels rare nowadays in films because actors always have to represent a certain tonality. However, by letting them speak on their own and giving them the time (and space) to tell their truths, Sing Sing succeeds at drawing us into their plight and understanding why RTA was of such importance not only for their own development but for the prison’s well-being.
Hiring a major actor to portray Divine G might have been a mistake, especially because the man himself appears in the movie. However, one can’t overstate just how magnifying Colman Domingo is here, and it may very well be the best performance of his career, one rife with emotional complexity at every turn. It’s also far more introspective and soul-crushing than his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Bayard Rustin in George C. Wolfe’s Rustin last year.
Domingo understands the story's weight more than anyone else and does everything he can to ensure that Divine G’s plight is seen and heard. In one of the most powerful monologues I’ve seen in ages, Domingo lets it all out and completely transforms into the person he’s representing, whom we briefly see during a fun and metatextual they have with the two. He didn’t win the Oscar for Rustin, but he should absolutely be in the conversation to win this go around. It’s far more layered and even more difficult to represent this amount of pain on screen with such grace (Domingo even touches upon this during the film. Representing ‘angry’ is easy, but ‘hurt’ and ‘pain’ is even harder).
With an enveloping visual language crafted impeccably by cinematographer Pat Scola, Sing Sing doesn’t take long to pull us into its representation of an inspiring but difficult story. But with Domingo commanding the screen and letting the people who deserve to have their voices heard be represented by themselves on screen, Kwedar accomplishes a rare drama of great importance.
Perhaps the ending is a bit too long, and perhaps the story swerves around in circles by the time it gets to the dress rehearsal. But even with its shortcomings, Sing Sing still remains an impactful watch, thanks to a career-defining performance from Colman Domingo, alongside naturalistic dialogues and sequences from the people who inhabited the correctional facility and were rehabilitated through the arts. The film remains a powerful but difficult watch that must be seen and discussed by as many people as possible.