IN THE SCENE

Francis offers a brief but comprehensive synopsis of film director Steve McQueen’s career.

Sir Steve Rodney McQueen—he was knighted for his contributions to cinema in 2020—was born in London in 1969, the son of a mother from Grenada and a father from Trinidad. He encountered extraordinary racial prejudice as a young man growing up in the suburbs of Ealing in the 1980s, but instead of becoming discouraged, these challenges “fuelled his determination to champion outsiders and underdogs.” Moreover, it led him to speak out candidly about the underrepresentation of Black people in British film. (“The fact that Black people in this country feel that there’s no space for them in the British film industry is a problem.”) The author, a television producer and scriptwriter, here leads an impressively concise but thorough tour of McQueen’s professional life, covering the totality of his directorial work in addition to his photography and sculpture. The book is short and dense—coming in at well under 200 pages, the text catalogues each artistic project in the spirit of summary. As a result, the book often reads like a narrated curriculum vitae or a series of encyclopedia entries. Quick considerations of a film’s “visual style,” for example, feel like little more than adumbrative footnotes. However, Francis’ writing is marvelously accessible, and the absence of a more rigorously critical approach is compensated for by the exhaustive discussion of McQueen’s extraordinary productivity. The author includes two extended interviews with McQueen—one is conducted by celebrated historian David Olusoga—in which the filmmaker’s indefatigable desire to create shines through lucidly. (“My only commitment – my only doctrine – is to not let the dust settle.”) This book is likely too light on analysis for either scholars or even enthusiasts who know McQueen’s films well. However, for the curious reader looking for a digestible overview of his work, this is an informative option.

A readable and wide-ranging consideration of McQueen’s work.