John Brown is a fascinating figure. Depending on where you grew up, you were taught either that he was a misguided freedom fighter or an irredeemable terrorist. (I went to school in Virginia, so I learned the latter.) The truth is somewhere in between — he was indeed a domestic terrorist, but he was also a man on the right side of history who recognized that bloody revolution was the only way to end slavery in America. The Good Lord Bird, a Showtime limited series premiering this week, attempts to paint a humanizing picture of the infamous abolitionist, and it succeeds thanks to an engaging script and a career-high performance by Ethan Hawke.
The limited series, based on the novel by James McBride, follows an enslaved teenage boy named Henry Shackleford (nicknamed “Onion”) who inadvertently gets swept up in John Brown’s crusade in the months leading up to Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry. Part Mark Twain and part historical drama, the series charms as it educates, delivering sweeping blows of triumph and tragedy alongside quieter moments of grace and humanity. It’s also weirdly funny, buoyed by a great ensemble cast firing on all cylinders.
Image via Showtime
Ethan Hawke’s performance as John Brown is captivating, and is easily some of the best work he has ever done. In one moment, he’s electrifying a group of his followers with explosively intense speeches or terrifying a batch of slave owners with bursts of ruthless violence. And in the very next moment, he becomes a quiet, thoughtful, almost adorably confused old man who doesn’t quite have all his wits about him. Despite these peaks and valleys of incandescence and serenity, John Brown never feels like a contradiction, or (gasp) a character in a television show. His manic bouts feel genuine, his unwavering devotion to his God and his cause extremely believable. Hawke’s presence is simultaneously enormous and understated, dominating every scene without necessarily controlling it. By the time the final episode ends, we get the sense that we knew John Brown, and that, whether or not we agree with everything he did, we understood him. Hawke has always been an interesting performer, but in The Good Lord Bird I literally could not take my eyes off of him. It is a masterful performance, so much so that I wanted to start the series over again as soon as it ended.
Joshua Caleb Johnson has the most demanding role as the fictional enslaved boy Onion: In addition to narrating every episode, Onion spends most of the series disguised as a teenage girl thanks to a misunderstanding that simply never gets corrected. It’s a decision that could be played farcically, but instead it winds up being a constant source of tension as Onion is terrified of being punished as both a liar and “a pansy.” On top of all that, he’s entering puberty, so Johnson has to juggle a coming-of-age tale in addition to being a slave masquerading as a girl on the run with a violent abolitionist. Johnson doesn’t always nail every beat, but he carries the show admirably, and he’s a heck of a discovery.
Image via Showtime
Onion himself is an intriguing character, beyond just being the protagonist. The entire reason he spends every episode in a dress is symbolic of the relationship between whites and Blacks in this time period. Even though John Brown is an antiracist who has made it his personal mission to end slavery in the United States, he doesn’t quite see Onion for the person he is. Whereas virtually every non-white character instantly recognizes Onion as a teenage boy, Brown clings to the notion that Onion is a young woman who needs his protection. Brown mishears the boy’s name “Henry” as “Henrietta,” never clarifies this, and then gives Henry the nickname “Onion” after Henry eats an old onion at Brown’s camp. Henry, who has been enslaved his entire life, is too fearful to correct Brown. This is ultimately addressed in a somewhat unbelievable manner that serves Brown’s character (which I won’t describe further in the interest of not spoiling the show), but for the majority of the series, Onion seems to exist to Brown as an abstract concept rather than a human being. Onion’s arc is fascinating, as it encompasses a number of things – an enslaved person adjusting to newfound freedom, a boy growing into a man, a son rebelling against his father, and a fearful person discovering courage and independence. As far as I know, he is the only fictional character in the primary cast, but that fact doesn’t make his journey any less powerful or meaningful.
Image via Showtime
Daveed Diggs only appears in a few episodes, but he is having an absolute blast playing legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Diggs portrays Douglass as a fussily intense statesman, a man equally in love with the abolitionist movement and his own image. His frustrated kinship with Brown provides some of the funnier moments of the series (their scenes together occasionally play out like watching someone try to corral their drunk friend at an office Christmas party). Diggs’ version of Douglass is entertainingly enamored with his fame and status, but he’s also completely devoted to the cause, even though he rarely sees eye-to-eye with Brown’s extreme methods. (Douglass famously declined to support Brown’s siege of Harpers Ferry because he thought it was a suicide mission, a moment that is heartbreakingly reenacted in the series.)
Another major standout in the supporting cast is Hubert Point-Du Jour as Bob, a slave Onion meets after fleeing Brown’s camp following a bloody attack. Bob becomes Onion’s reluctant companion for most of the rest of the series, a man less concerned with emancipation than he is with simply staying alive. At once Onion’s conscience and confidant, Bob serves as a more down-to-earth father figure than the larger than life John Brown.
The show contains a few other fun cameos, including Maya Hawke as John Brown’s daughter Annie (appropriate), Steve Zahn as a dimwitted racist who briefly befriends Onion, David Morse as Onion’s cruel former master, Wyatt Russell as J.E.B. Stuart, and Orlando Jones as the mysterious Rail Man whom Onion pays to hire additional men to assist in the Harpers Ferry siege. It feels a little strange to describe anything relating to this time period as “fun,” but The Good Lord Bird does an excellent job of balancing its serious subject matter with an almost breezy folktale tone. Each episode contains both profoundly emotional moments and beats that will make you laugh out loud. Also, it never veers into exploitation, which is a common pitfall in films that deal with American slavery. The show is able to convey the extremities of injustice and cruelty (and even righteous fury) without dwelling in violence and suffering. The show’s ultimate message is about the beauty of life, not the extinguishing of it, and recognizing the enormity of the sacrifices people have made to defend the right we all have to exist in peace.
Grade: A
New episodes of The Good Lord Bird air Sundays on Showtime.
