We all knew that the actor playing Han in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Alden Ehrenreich, was not going to make this movie. We were certain of this for two reasons: one, surpassing Harrison Ford’s Han was next to impossible; two, in the new era of Wonder Woman and Black Panther, the only thing that can justify another story of a white man saving the world is very exceptional writing and directing. True, one of Solo‘s writers, Lawrence Kasdan, co-wrote the best Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, but the director Ron Howard has never displayed anything but, at best, a middling imagination. A Hollywood white male hero in our Wakanda times will not generate much excitement unless his movie is crafted by a genius of Spike Jonze’s caliber. With all of this in the background, everyone turned to the black man playing Lando Calrissian—Donald Glover. We expected him to steal the whole show.
I watched the film, and can confirm that no such theft occurred. Glover did not reach for greatness, and pretty much kept his hands on his own, almost unremarkable (not terrible or great) performance. From the moment he makes his entrance, which is in the second act of this five-act film, to his last scene, we see a Lando Calrissian that any top black American Hollywood actor could easily match. I even think that Kevin Hart might have done a better job with the galactic player. Glover never got down and dirty with his character; he made him a touch too noble, too elegant, too dreamy. But Calrissian is not a nice person. He is a bit of a weasel. And I think Kevin Hart would have brought to the surface this odious, offensive, obnoxious side of Lando Calrissian.
That said, I enjoyed Solo: A Star Wars Story because of its cinematography. The star of the film is its black director of photography Bradford Young.
Like Arrival, which Bradford Young lensed, Solo opens in a world with very little light. This is the planet of Corellia, which is essentially a 19th century London rookery—all of the street kids are right out of Oliver Twist and all of the women look like Jack the Ripper’s victims. The scenes that happen here (the slum planet), and also on the next planet where an imperial conflict (a regular Boer War) is ongoing, are the most intense in respect to Young’s mastery of the dark arts. Though he has to resort to standard lighting on other planets and spaceship interiors, when the cautious director allows him to handle the camera freely, his genius is once again visible.
If you closely watch the love scene in the Millennium Falcon, something that might have never occurred to you becomes apparent. The motion of a handheld camera is greatly improved by a sense of rhythm.
