Clemency

Clemency is proof of just how effortlessly [Woodard] can lead a film.

A masterwork.

Woodard, unshowy and preternaturally still, offers us a stubborn professional being steadily eaten up by her involvement with the glacially slow killing-machine.

It takes an actor of Woodard's calibre to show us how Bernadine arrived at this point, and why she finds herself so conflicted.

Clemency is one of those deliberately harrowing movies that leaves you feeling elated. The very precision of the film-making gives you a sense of hope.

The moral and ethical debates around the death penalty rarely touch on the toll it takes on the people involved, but that's the grey area writer-director Chinonye Chukwu explores with a humanist's touch and an keen ear for all her characters.

Chukwu and Woodard together certainly do not tell an easily digestible story, but they do tell an absolutely necessary story of our humanity, pressed to its limits.

Chukwu avoids any overt didacticism in her storytelling, even if the mounting pressure on the beleaguered protagonist is delivered with quiet resolve and suffocating dread.

Alfre Woodard stuns in the harrowing and affecting death row drama... her performance is a masterclass in quietly conveying the slow, steady grounding down of Bernadine’s humanity.

Clemency is a clear singular actor’s showcase, with Alfre Woodard’s first and final scenes and everything in-between reminding us what a sheer force of nature she really is.