So I saw Sinners. Then I saw it again. Next I’m gonna see it in IMAX. I’m constantly talking about it and watching YouTube videos of director Ryan Coogler discussing it. I can’t get it out of my mind, ya’ll.
Apparently I’m not the only one who wants/needs to see it more than once. What makes this film so powerful?
There are so MANY angles from which you could analyze it. I’ll pick one.
I don’t think it’s JUST the masterful filmmaking, the transcendent musical score, Michael B. Jordan’s outstanding performance, the stellar ensemble, or its razor sharp indictment of racial predation — that make this film so powerful. I think it’s also that Sinners emerges from something AI could never replicate: the weight, depth and shimmer of ancestral presence.
We’re living in this age of infinite content, and AI can generate a vampire movie in minutes, but Sinners is something…else.
Sinners was not born out of market research. It began with family, loss, memory, love. In multiple interviews, Coogler explains that he was away from home making Creed when his Uncle James, the oldest male member of his family from Mississippi, died. He felt sad and guilty that he couldn’t be there with him. With Sinners, he set out to write a love letter to his uncle, and ultimately over four years, took a deep dive into the American South, Delta Blues and its impact on the world, and his ancestors’ lives.
The Filmmaker as Griot
As we know from the film, in West African tradition, griots are the sacred keepers of ancestral memory—part historian, part musician, part spiritual guide. In Sinners, young Sammie unconsciously fulfills this role, preserving the stories and lives of his community through his transcendent blues music.
But Coogler himself becomes the griot here, transforming his mourning ritual into a cinematic blaze that leaves us exalted. He’s not just making entertainment; he’s bearing witness to “a time period and a place that my family doesn’t talk about much because there’s a lot of feelings associated with our history.”
For me, this film is a marvel. I see it as family pain that has been processed, reverently, and becomes pearl – luminous, irreplaceable, impossible to replicate.
What stories are you carrying that only you can tell? How do we preserve authentic human experience in an age of artificial everything?
Maurvelous Life Creative 