The Black Sea

The-Black-Sea
The Black Sea

You can take a Black guy out of Brooklyn, but you would never take Brooklyn out of a Black guy. That’s the adage that reverberates throughout the film The Black Sea co-directed by Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden, which is a more or less representation of modern human Darwinism at its peak, or at least a variant of it. Rather than inciting a message of “survival of the fittest”, their Bulgarian-set dramedy has a more shapely version of it with the emotive endeavor.

A Brooklyn-based opportunist named Khalid (Harden) is approached by a Bulgarian sugar mama and he quits his barista job, who brings him to her country. She is advised when he reaches there that the client is no longer living. Khalid has a limited amount of cash and with his pockets nearly empty, he is surrounded by culture as the sole African American within the borders of Bulgaria, seeking to perform menial work to get back home. His misfortunes, however, led him to a lovely travel agent in the area by the name of Ina (Irmena Chichikova). Together they were able to form a partnership to open a coffee shop with Khalid’s coffee skills and Ina’s experience, much to the annoyance of Georgi (Stoyo Mirkov), Ina’s former boyfriend, and the mafia boss of the town.

Be it the stories she captures in Skate Kitchen, or a more documentary style seen in The Wolfpack, her distinctive verite style even allows her to have gestural sketches for a given project and have it visually stunning. The Black Sea is the first of those commentaries. Moselle likes having her subject matter include standard observational Verite, and it works in this film as well. This depicts her impeccable yet dramatic sense of camera work and exposes the beauty within the place. She did the same in NYC with Skate Kitchen and Betty and here she does the same with Bulgaria.

You can remove the Black man from Brooklyn, but the Black man will always remain in Brooklyn. This is the proverb that is depicted through Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden’s The Black Sea, which is experimental in how it attempts to portray human Darwinism, or at least a version of it, in modern times. Instead of rallying for the ideas of natural selection, their comedy-drama set in Bulgaria gives it a new dimension with compassion.

Khalid couldn’t keep working as a barista after getting an invitation from a Bulgarian sugar mama. As soon as he arrives at this woman’s home, he finds out that she has died. With little cash in hand, Khalid considers himself drifting about in Bulgaria as the lone Black man, in quest of menial work that would allow him to return to his homeland. He is inducing his blunders to charm a local travel agent, Ina’s (Irmena Chichikova) beauty. Although Khalid’s know-how and coffee skills encouraged them, it is Ina’s lived experience that brings them together to start a coffee store against the wishes of Georgi (Stoyo Mirkov), Ina’s ex-lover and the town’s mafia head.

Her style is so resolute that whether she is doing narratives (Skate Kitchen) or documentaries (The Wolfpack), she does not need to write a script or make the actors rehearse. The Black Sea serves this purpose well. This ability of the director to create an immersive experience is at play in each of her works. It maintains her straightforward camera style, capturing the enchantment of the place. She did it to NYC for Skate Kitchen and Betty, and now with this documentary The Black Sea reaches Bulgaria.

The image is largely sustained by a voice that is Derrick B. Harden’s, with his style, fit, and charm being incredibly loud forcing the narrative forward. He has such an old-school Black mankind of bearing the vouch of the streets accompanied by a self-deprecating nature that doesn’t take them too seriously as they go about their business. But they flighty, sociable hustler persona balances out the negatives. He is so Brooklyn that some of his skill set even come in handy in rarely appropriate situations. For some odd reason, a picture comes to mind where Khalid is teaching Ina how to make good match the level of politeness, that makes me think Russian women were raised by the czars, telling her this is all I can ever drink in a polite low voice, “Ever since they gentrified Brooklyn.”

Khalid, in one of his encounters, when going out sees a man with a shot of DMX on his shirt approaches him without hesitation and makes friends with him. There is something ebullient about him. Being a Brooklynite myself I couldn’t help but get amused in looking at those humanistic frames on the screen. It genuinely makes you laugh to watch Harden’s ad-libs capturing the Bulgarian culture and Khalid’s lively character doesn’t turn the film into an overextended montage from someone’s summer houses.

The first half of The Black Sea is a barrage of funny stories with a little different plot but with the same characters, all of which manage to hurl Khalid into charismatic and comical acts. The jokes are the cool kind with no sense of anything too rude or occupying such as Borat-type humor.

One notably hilarious moment occurs when Khalid accepts a job as a pool boy during a cruise, wearing only Speedos. The scene is a perfect comedy, with a punch line that is guaranteed to have people laughing.

With Khalid getting more of a sense of belonging and love from the people, mainly from Ina, you are enthralled by the charming world that draws you in. Moselle and Harden, without any script, are somehow able to capture a Paddington-esque nice-core energy preceded by solid character arc about self-reliant, second chances and sense of belonging, ‘Mummy, look what I have done, I don’t need you to love me, I need someone to work first.’

It is hard not to think that the film comes dangerously close to Sacha Baron Cohen with Harden’s fish out of water angle against Bulgaria’s culture. Fortunately, and to its credit, it shifts rapidly towards a more appealing character dimension.

The film is relatively short but its pacing has its weak moments. After the narrative kicks in, it becomes vignettes several unnecessary times to grace the plot. Moreover, the usual dramatic schema vis-a-vis romance involving Ina and Khalid do not always resonate as well, as they properly should.

Due to the skilled teamwork of Crystal Moselle behind the camera and Derrick B. Harden in front, it is a rare case where ‘cinematic freestyling’ works. What The Black Sea succeeds in, is providing us with a number of entertaining dramedy which puts Bulgaria in a beautiful light, almost like it is a neighborhood of Brooklyn.

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