‘Exhibiting Forgiveness’ Review – A Searing, Graceful Look At Black Trauma’s Complexities [Sundance 2024]

For Black people, processing trauma is complicated.

To be more specific, Black Americans have a tricky relationship with trauma, especially trauma that occurs between loved ones, like romantic partners and family members. One uniquely powerful factor in that relationship is religion, which has long been a central tenet in Black American life. It has often been cited as a source of strength, resolve, and joy amidst environments constructed to deny us of those things. Religion can also be a cudgel to brute-force our way through emotions and experiences that may require more nuanced examinations. We know God through Sunday service, gospel music, and potlucks with people we’ve known our whole lives. For us, it can be easier and safer to seek Jesus than a mental health professional.

Exhibiting Forgiveness, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, puts pressure on that emotional and spiritual logic. Titus Kaphar’s directorial feature follows budding multimedia artist Tarrell (André Holland) on his journey to process his childhood trauma at the hands of his physically abusive and drug-addicted father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks). Tarrell suffers from nighttime panic attacks and an artistic block stemming from the abuse. He resists seeking help until La’Ron, who’s gotten clean and committed himself to God, re-enters his life through his mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). Tarrell initially has no desire to reconnect with La’Ron, let alone forgive him. He changes his mind, however, when a brutal night terror scares his wife, Aisha (Andra Day), and son, Jermaine. To break the cycle, Tarrell has to try to find a resolution with his father.

The path to forgiveness is less well-paved than cinema often makes it out to be, and Kaphar smartly avoids traditional and reductive narrative structures. Exhibiting Forgiveness is messy in the best way, engaging fully with the often brutal and raw emotions and memories that have made Tarell and La’Ron’s reconciliation a nonstarter. Kaphar creatively conveys Tarrell’s past bleeding into his present with memory flashes, objects, and people – including Tarrell’s younger self – walking alongside him as quiet but unmissable ghosts. It can create an initially discombobulating experience as you try to work out reality and fantasy, but that tension is the point. Tarrell’s trauma haunts him, and therefore, Kaphar ensures it haunts us as well. The device sets the urgency that informs every ferocious, gutting, and illuminating conversation and confrontation in the film.

Once Tarrell and La’Ron confront each other, Exhibiting Forgiveness doesn’t pull one rhetorical punch. Starting from their first sitdown in La’Ron’s basement room in a church home, the film brutally cleaves raw emotion from the bone by the ounce. The two men push and pull at each other: Tarrell tries to prove that La’Ron hasn’t changed and is still the monster of his childhood, and La’Ron tries to make Tarrell understand why he treated him so abominably. Their confrontations are remarkable for their specificity and their little-explored but resonant truths around generational trauma and Black toxic masculinity. La’Ron candidly shares how his father’s volatile nature shaped his approach to Tarrell, insisting he had to “put steel” in him. Even though he wants forgiveness, La’Ron firmly believes that Tarrell’s successful ends justified his cruel means. Tarrell, however, vehemently disagrees, wanting to break the cycle before it affects Jermaine the same way.

Toxic masculinity is but one thematic thread that Exhibiting Forgiveness refuses to tie into a tidy knot. It isn’t even the most stunning. Where the film truly knocks you over is its address of religion’s role in Black reconciliation. Joyce is a particularly pious woman who can readily quote scripture when needed. She uses a verse from Matthew to encourage Tarrell not to reject La’Ron after their first brutal conversation. Frustrated by her insistence on forgiving La’Ron after everything he put them both through, Tarrell turns the Bible back on her, effectively pointing out the hypocrisies of religious doctrine, pushing it to the point of blasphemy. The staggering scene strikes at the core of how Black people can use religion to justify the unjustifiable, whether it be for someone’s soul or to maintain the status quo. 

Because Exhibiting Forgiveness understands that life contains contradictory multitudes, the film doesn’t outright reject religion as a source of Black healing. During a family crisis, Tarrell does turn to his faith, even allowing his father to recite the prayer. The moment doesn’t heal the rift between them; instead, it’s a momentary pause for a cause greater than either. Religion ultimately factors into the film’s prevailing question, or at least the question we would traditionally ask: can Tarrell forgive La’Ron? The beauty of the answer is in its complexity. While Tarrell holds Joyce and religion accountable for their role in his childhood, he does attain what Joyce wanted for her son: spiritual peace. These are thorny, complicated ideas, and Kaphar’s graceful direction and refreshingly honest and detailed script communicate them with incredible impact.

Exhibiting Forgiveness’s impact is also felt through its excellent performances. André Holland gives one of the year’s first great performances, conveying a lifetime of unresolved anguish and righteous fury with spellbinding grace. He has moments of broad, fiery emotion that are undeniably powerful. However, Holland is most captivating in stillness, absorbing the failings of Tarrell’s childhood and processing how he can break the cycle in real-time. As Aisha, Andra Day is a lovely complement to Holland, emphasizing his quieter moments with her own dignified energy. John Earl Jelks is a dynamic and ferocious foil as La’Ron, who, even at his worst, manages to elicit sympathy and understanding for his struggles with addiction. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is similarly powerful: her reaction to Tarrell’s barnstorming of her religious devotion is shattering.

Exhibiting Forgiveness understands the complex relationship between Blackness and interpersonal trauma and tells a searing yet graceful tale that details one path forward. It is a triumphant marvel that asks tough questions of its characters and audience and refuses to settle for easy answers. Kaphar is so confident in his directorial lyricism and complexity that it’s astonishing that this is his first feature. If this film indicates what’s coming, then he may be the newest vital voice in Black cinema and beyond.

Exhibiting Forgiveness had its World Premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Director: Titus Kaphar

Writer: Titus Kaphar

Rated: NR

Runtime: 117m