Sinners is a miracle

featuring Sinners, a film by Ryan Coogler and Making Movies, a book by Sidney Lumet

It’s 3 AM and I feel like I could run through a brick wall. I’ve been trying to shut down my brain, slow down my heart, and fall back asleep for 30 minutes, but the feeling that I could run through a brick wall won’t go away. The pulse in my right temple is making an audible noise against my pillow. I am fired up.

Let’s back up a week to see how I got here.

Thursday April 17th: I finished Sidney Lumet’s book Making Movies (thanks so much

Justin Skidmore

for recommending it) and realized that making a movie is an act of creation, which is innately difficult. It requires the collaboration of hundreds of people including artists, technicians, and businesspeople (which also makes it an act of commerce). Lumet kept repeating the phrase “making the same movie”

When we’re sitting at rushes, watching yesterday’s work, the greatest compliment we can give each other is, “Good work. We’re all making the same movie.”¹²

I love that idea of individuals acting with a collective mindset.

Sunday April 20th: I didn’t go to church on Easter. I made the mistake of reading Donald Trump’s Easter messages and felt sick and angry. I couldn’t bring myself to face my faith community. I’ve been struggling to reconcile how a community of Christians who have taught me to be a certain way my entire life — patient, loving, forgiving, honest, charitable, slow to anger — could then so enthusiastically get behind a person who, in my eyes, is none of those things (yet who claims to be a God-fearing Christian). That they would choose that person to lead our country and shape its identity has broken my brain and my soul.

Monday April 21st: I read best-selling author Ryan Holiday’s New York Times op ed about the Naval Academy canceling his speech because he wouldn’t censor himself. A small part of his speech was going to address the recent book banning at the Academy library and he wouldn’t cut it, so they uninvited him. Read the whole article but here’s an excerpt:

Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was not one of the books removed from the Naval Academy library, and as heinous as that book is, it should be accessible to scholars and students of history. However, this makes the removal of Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” inexplicable. Whatever one thinks of diversity, equity and inclusion, we are talking about not the writings of external enemies here but, in many cases, art, serious scholarship and legitimate criticism of America’s past. One of the removed books is about Black soldiers in World War II, another is about how women killed in the Holocaust are portrayed, and another is a reimagining of Kafka called “The Last White Man.” No people at any public institution should have to fear losing their job for pushing back on such an obvious overreach, let alone those tasked with defending our freedom. Yet here we are.

I work for a government contractor and it has paused all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion activities out of fear of government reprisals. It has been disappointing and Holiday’s article got me freshly fired up.

Tuesday April 22nd: I saw Sinners in IMAX. I think I left my body during the “I Lied to You” sequence. The music lit my insides on fire and I wanted to get up, dance, and clap like I was at a tent revival. Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed) directs with so much swagger and Michael B. Jordan embodies two different characters, twin brothers Smoke and Stack, with a charm and confidence that I will never know.

Set in 1932 Mississippi, the film features the blues, “a music made to help people who were constantly under attack — to help them cope, to help them feel better, and to remind them that they were human.”³ Sammie (played by the incredible Miles Caton), loves the blues and hurriedly picks his cotton quota to have time for music. His father, a preacher, urges him to “drop the guitar,” renounce music and repent. During the song “I Lied to You” Sammie sings:

See I love ya Papa, you did all you could do
They say the truth hurts, so I lie to you
Yes, I lied to you, I love the blues

His art, his music, makes him feel human and gives him meaning. He won’t give up music. The decision to keep playing the blues ends up imperiling his life but also saving it.

Wednesday April 23rd: I listened to the music from Sinners all day.

Thursday April 24th 2:30 AM: I wake up with the phrase “I feel like I could run through a brick wall” slamming against my brain wall, struggling to get out.

The events of the past week have added up to this feeling that I want to make something to help me cope, give me hope, and help me feel better. I, like Lumet, want to work with other artists to “make the same movie.” Like Holiday, I don’t ever want to compromise my values. Like Coogler and Sammie, I want to make meaningful art and use it to find connection with God, other people, and my own busted up soul. I want to participate in acts of creation and collaboration.

The Naval Academy may have banned books on race, but Coogler and his team made Sinners, a movie that centers Black lives and the Black experience. Look at the highly talented group of costume designers, make-up artists, musicians, set designers, stunt performers, special and practical effects personnel, sound editors, i.e. ARTISTS that put this movie together; it’s a miracle and I hope you get a chance to see it.

Thanks for reading,

Kyle

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1. Lumet, Sidney. Making Movies (p. 58). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

2. Another quote I love from Making Movies:

There was only one night of shooting. Gerry Fisher, the cameraman, told me to take a long dinner break, since he’d need about an hour and a half to finish lighting once night had fallen. Cameramen can’t fine-tune their lighting until it’s completely dark. An hour after nightfall, I drove out to the set. The road led over a hill. As the car came over the crest, I saw below me a small, concentrated, white-hot diamond. Everything around it was black except for this beautiful burst of light, where the set was being lit. It’s a sight I’ll always remember: people working so hard, all making the same movie, creating, literally, a picture in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night.

Lumet, Sidney. Making Movies (p. 136). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

3. NPR interview with Ryan Coogler https://www.npr.org/2025/04/23/nx-s1-5373434/ryan-coogler-says-sinners-inspiration-felt-like-a-bolt-of-lightning