At a prestigious New England school, racism and horror are experienced by two black women. Master is a heavy-handed examination of racial discrimination in the academy as a microcosm of American society. Through genre tropes and race politics, it pushes an anvil-like plot. Ostensibly intelligent protagonists become helpless pawns in systems that proscribe bias. Instead of provoking revolution, they are appeasing forces keeping things the way they are. The message that Master conveys is clear enough.
Regina Hall plays Gail Bishop, the first black “master” at Belleview House in Ancaster College, Massachusetts. Also appearing with her is Zoe Renee who portrays Jasmine Moore who has recently moved into Gail’s house on campus as a shy freshman student. They all find it hard to adapt to their new environments initially. For example, Jasmine learns about her dormitory room being notorious for ghosts after having found out that one girl had killed herself there; on other hand Gail goes through some weird experiences throughout her acclimation period.
For instance, Amelia (played by Talia Ryder) and her gang of snobbish friends make it difficult for Jasmine to fit in with them as she rooms with Amelia, who is white-skinned. Liv Beckman then awards her a failing mark because she does not grasp what was expected in the paper during the fall semester making her problem even worse than ever before where depression turned into fear since she believed there was something supernatural following her whereas this also affected Gail too as well as others around her while settling down into his job quite easily basically until he began feeling threatened by Jasmine’s official complaint against him regarding his assessment results which were based upon misapprehension perhaps some sort of prejudice or any other reason may still be unviable.
Almost all white characters in Master behave poorly to some extent .In her debut feature film Mariama Diallo points fingers at everyone’s racist behaviors. The two leading ladies have to keep proving themselves and that becomes increasingly difficult in the midst of even more freaky incidents happening one after another. Therefore, Jasmine begins to develop physical injuries but Gail is concerned only with talking. This turns these scenes into a farce. Any student in this kind of distress would have been removed from the dorm. To further pursue her agenda, Diallo uses Jasmine as a punching bag.
However, master’s horrors fall flat; they do not have any real scares .Each time Jasmine gets threatened, Diallo changes the lighting to red creating horror that seems unimaginative. Unfortunately Gail doesn’t respond well when faced with intense pressure situations. Throughout this film, both lead characters demonstrate stupidity non-stop. What for would she remain in such a haunted room? And then further lie about it being safe for her family members and relatives? It is understandable that during mental instability irrational choices are made but Jasmine’s weak character which can be likened to a lamb led to slaughter is not realistic.
I had some serious problems with how Master ends though .The storyline around Liv Beckman’s tenure takes an exploitative turn typical of tabloid journalism on racial issues. Mariama Diallo provides much darker resolutions for both Jasmime and Gail than for Liv Beckman especially when she does it directly without mincing words or using parables save mentioning overcoming “entrenched racism” away from other things where some grit could be displayed by her main characters hence indicating no hope at all which is really disappointing when remembering very many others got knocked down yet kept getting up once more like always until now complaints without purpose are pointless because everybody has tried before anyway so why waste time on this Master makes sense and falls apart simultaneously
Watch free movies on Fmovies
