U.S. Navy Declares Two Aviators Dead After Jet Crashes Near Mount Rainier During Training

Two crew members who were missing following the crash of a fighter jet in mountainous terrain in Washington state during a routine training flight have been declared dead, the U.S. Navy said Sunday.

The EA-18G Growler jet from the Electronic Attack Squadron crashed east of Mount Rainier on Tuesday afternoon, according to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. Search teams, including a U.S. Navy MH-60S helicopter, launched from the air station to try to find the crew and crash site.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Army Special Forces soldiers trained in mountaineering, high-angle rescue and technical communications were brought in to reach the wreckage, which was located Wednesday by an aerial crew resting at about 6,000 feet (1,828 meters) in a remote, steep and heavily wooded area east of Mount Rainier, officials said.

The aviators’ names won’t be released until a day after their next of kin have been notified, the Navy said in a statement Sunday, adding that search and rescue efforts have shifted into a long-term salvage and recovery operation as the cause of the crash is still being investigated.

“It is with a heavy heart that we share the loss of two beloved Zappers,” said Cmdr. Timothy Warburton, commanding officer of the aviators’ Electronic Attack Squadron. “Our priority right now is taking care of the families of our fallen aviators. … We are grateful for the ongoing teamwork to safely recover the deceased.”

Locating the missing crew members “as quickly and as safely as possible” had been top priority, Capt. David Ganci, commander, Electronic Attack Wing, U.S. Pacific Fleet, said Thursday.

The EA-18G Growler is similar to the F/A-18F Super Hornet and includes sophisticated electronic warfare devices. Most of the Growler squadrons are based at Whidbey Island. One squadron is based at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan.

The “Zappers” were recently deployed on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The search took place near Mount Rainier, a towering active volcano that is blanketed in snowfields and glaciers year-round.

The first production of the Growler was delivered to Whidbey Island in 2008. In the past 15 years, the Growler has operated around the globe supporting major actions, the Navy said. The plane seats a pilot in front and an electronics operator behind them.

“The EA-18G Growler aircraft we fly represents the most advanced technology in airborne Electronic Attack and stands as the Navy’s first line of defense in hostile environments,” the Navy said on its website. Each aircraft costs about $67 million.

Military aircraft training exercises can be dangerous and sometimes result in crashes, injuries and deaths.

In May, an F-35 fighter jet on its way from Texas to Edwards Air Force Base near Los Angeles crashed after the pilot stopped to refuel in New Mexico. The pilot was the only person on board in that case and was taken to a hospital with serious injuries.

Last year, eight U.S. Air Force special Operations Command service members were killed when a CV-22B Osprey aircraft they were flying in crashed off the coast of Japan.

—Associated Press writer Jesse Bedayn contributed to this report from Denver.

source https://time.com/7095376/washington-state-navy-fighter-jet-crash-training-deaths/

Thelma Mothershed Wair, of the School-Integrating Little Rock Nine, Dies at 83

Thelma Mothershed Wair, one of the nine Black students who integrated a high school in Arkansas’ capital city of Little Rock in 1957 while a mob of white segregationists yelled threats and insults, has died at age 83.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Mothershed Wair died Saturday at a hospital in Little Rock after having complications from multiple sclerosis, her sister, Grace Davis, confirmed Sunday to The Associated Press.

The students who integrated Central High School were known as the Little Rock Nine.

For three weeks in September 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus used the National Guard to block the Black students from enrolling in Central High, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated classrooms were unconstitutional. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent members of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division to escort the students into school on Sept. 25, 1957.

Davis said she was enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville when her sister and the other students—Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls—integrated Central High School.

“I didn’t think anybody was really going to hurt her because, you know, we’ve had racial incidents in Little Rock over the years,” Davis said of her sister. “People would say things that were mean, but they never really hurt anybody.”

Davis said in the years that followed she and her sister spoke about the experience.

“I think one time somebody put some ink on her skirt or something when she was coming through the hallway. And, of course, there was always name-calling,” Davis said. “But she never really had any physical confrontations with any of the students up there.”

Faubus closed all of the schools in Little Rock in 1958 to try to avoid further integration. Mothershed went out of state to finish her remaining high school classes. The academic credits transferred back to Little Rock, and she ultimately earned her diploma from Central High School.

“She was always a fighter,” Davis said of her sister. “She’s been sick her entire life. She was born with a congenital heart defect and was told at an early age that she would never get out of her teens. So as she approached her 16th birthday, I remember Mother talking about how afraid she was because she thought she was going to die. But she did what she wanted to do. She enjoyed life.”

Mothershed earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics education from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a master’s degree in guidance and counseling from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Mothershed married Fred Wair in 1965. The couple have one son, Scott; two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 2005, and Mothershed Wair moved back to Little Rock, Davis said.

According to the National Park Service, Mothershed Wair worked in the East St. Louis, Illinois, school system for 10 years as a home economics teacher and for 18 years as a counselor for elementary career education before retiring in 1994. She also worked at the Juvenile Detention Center of the St. Clair County Jail in Illinois, and was an instructor of survival skills for women at the American Red Cross.

Each member of the Little Rock Nine was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, and they donated them to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock in 2011.

—Wagster Pettus reported from Jackson, Mississippi.

source https://time.com/7095372/thelma-mothershed-wair-little-rock-nine-arkansas-obituary/

Georgia Authorities Investigating Dock Gangway That Collapsed, Killing Seven

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Georgia authorities said Sunday they are investigating the “catastrophic failure” of a dock gangway that collapsed and killed seven on Sapelo Island, where crowds had gathered for a fall celebration by the island’s tiny Gullah-Geechee community of Black slave descendants.

“It is a structural failure. There should be very, very little maintenance to an aluminum gangway like that, but we’ll see what the investigation unfolds,” Georgia Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Walter Rabon said at a news conference.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The gangway was installed in 2021, authorities said.

Rabon said three people remained hospitalized in critical condition from Saturday’s collapse.

Rabon said “upwards of 40 people” were on the gangway when the “catastrophic failure” occurred, and at least 20 people fell into the water. The gangway connected an outer dock where people board the ferry to another dock onshore.

None of the seven people killed were residents of the island, Rabon said. Eight people were taken to hospitals, at least six of them were initially reported Saturday to have critical injuries.

The ferry dock was rebuilt after Georgia officials in October 2020 settled a federal lawsuit by residents of the tiny community of Hogg Hummock, who complained the state-operated ferry boats and docks they rely upon to travel between Sapelo Island the mainland failed to meet federal accessibility standards for people with disabilities.

The state agreed to demolish and replace outdated docks while upgrading ferry boats to accommodate people in wheelchairs and those with impaired hearing. The state also paid a cash settlement of $750,000.

Crews from the U.S. Coast Guard, the McIntosh County Fire Department, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and others searched the water, according to Natural Resources spokesperson Tyler Jones. The agency operates the dock and ferry boats that transport people between the island and the mainland.

A team of engineers and construction specialists were on site early Sunday to begin investigating why the walkway failed, Jones said.

“There was no collision” with a boat or anything else, Jones said. “The thing just collapsed. We don’t know why.”

Helicopters and boats with side-scanning sonar were used in the search, according to a Department of Natural Resources statement.

Among the dead was a chaplain for the state agency, Jones said.

President Joe Biden said federal officials were ready to provide any assistance needed.

Sapelo Island is about 60 miles (97 kilometers) south of Savannah, reachable from the mainland by boat.

The deadly collapse happened as island residents, family members and tourists gathered for Cultural Day, an annual fall event spotlighting Hogg Hummock, home to a few dozen Black residents. The community of dirt roads and modest homes was founded after the Civil War by former slaves from the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding.

Hogg Hummock’s slave descendants are extremely close, having been “bonded by family, bonded by history and bonded by struggle,” said Roger Lotson, the only Black member of the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners. His district includes Sapelo Island.

“Everyone is family, and everyone knows each other,” Lotson said. “In any tragedy, especially like this, they are all one. They’re all united. They all feel the same pain and the same hurt.”

Small communities descended from enslaved island populations in the South — known as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia — are scattered along the coast from North Carolina to Florida. Scholars say their separation from the mainland caused residents to retain much of their African heritage, from their unique dialect to skills and crafts such as cast-net fishing and basket-weaving.

In 1996, Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the United States’ treasured historic sites.

But the community’s population has been shrinking for decades, and some families have sold their land to outsiders who built vacation homes.

Tax increases and zoning changes by the local government in McIntosh County have been met by protests and lawsuits by Hogg Hummock residents and landowners. They have been battling for the past year to undo zoning changes approved by county commissioners in September 2023 that doubled the size of homes allowed in Hogg Hummock.

Residents say they fear larger homes will lead to tax increases that could force them to sell land that their families have held for generations.

source https://time.com/7095337/georgia-authorities-investigating-dock-gangway-collapse/

The World Is Still Hooked on Russian Energy—at Its Own Peril

Two and a half years into Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Western effort to wean Europe off of Russian oil and gas and isolate the Kremlin has stalled. The E.U.’s much lauded energy transition has kept apace, but it has also provided cover for continuing and in some cases increasing purchase of Russian energy that is funding its ongoing assault on Ukraine. The result is an unbowed President Putin, an acute foreign policy failure for President Biden, a geopolitical power shift in favor of the U.S.’s adversaries, and a bleak outlook for Ukraine.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Russia’s power in the modern world was—and is—built upon its vast energy and natural resources. As much as 50% of its state budget over the last dozen years has been oil and gas exports. With the E.U. relying on Russian imports for over 40% of its pre-war energy sources—25% of oil, 48% of pipeline gas, 48% of coal—and the 2021 completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany poised to push these numbers higher, Putin seemed to have calculated that the continent was too dependent to risk a proper response to his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It’s now clear he wasn’t wrong.

The U.S., U.K., and E.U. have enacted economic measures to punish the Kremlin. Over 2022 and 2023, Western powers fully or partially banned all imports of Russian crude oil by tanker, oil products, coal, pipeline gas, some liquified natural gas (LNG), and more, and eventually many of the financial mechanisms and technologies necessary to process trade transactions.

These measures were not imposed all at once because the E.U. couldn’t survive a sudden and absolute cut off of its energy supply from Russia. LNG has remained mostly unrestricted, as have nuclear power resources. For oil, instead of banning it outright, the White House led an effort to impose a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian crude to limit Putin’s profits without overly constricting global supply in a way that could increase inflation. Natural gas pipeline exports dried up, with a trickle still passing through Ukraine and up to 38 billion cubic meters per year going to China. But overall, fossil fuel imports from Russia to Europe dropped from €16 to €1 billion a month—from 2022 to 2023, Russian oil and gas revenues dropped by nearly a quarter.

But that’s where Western sanctions stopped working. In 2024, Russia is having a bumper year. Its GDP growth is on track to be above 4%, unemployment is at a record low, and military recruitment and soldiers’ salaries have in turn bolstered record wage growth. Much of this is because the Kremlin is pumping money into military-industrial sectors to support its war effort in Ukraine—40% of public spending is now on defense and security. But domestic war spending is only half the story.

The other half is that the world has given up on giving up Russian energy. The embargoes on Russian energy products are not much more than sanctions theater. Austria is the most flagrant example, with Russian gas still accounting for the vast majority of its energy imports. But even where pipeline gas imports to the E.U. have stopped, the more expensive Russian LNG was never banned so its purchase has increased by almost 20%—leaving Russia as the second biggest seller of gas to the continent, and guaranteeing the Kremlin higher profits. Meanwhile, so-called “shadow fleet” oil tankers carrying Russian oil have been pulling directly into European ports for several months, according to Greenpeace, in violation of Western sanctions. In total, the E.U. has paid Russia over €196 billion for oil, gas, and coal since February 2022, money that has kept the Kremlin flush—Russia has even managed to rebuild its military.

These sanctions failures have also led to diminished global influence for the U.S. Turkey has developed considerable leverage as an energy middleman, and NATO member, which it is using to stymie both U.S. and E.U. foreign policy goals. Meanwhile, President Biden’s careful unwillingness to let Ukraine seize a military advantage for fear of “escalation” has reenforced the impression that its support is far from absolute. China is likely factoring this into its calculations on Taiwan, as is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, as he continues to expand Israel’s war across the Middle East.

There are also environmental concerns. Although the immediate post-invasion desperation to be less vulnerable to Russian energy dominance triggered a massive effort in Europe to replace fossil fuels with renewables, advancing the energy transition by years, the cheap oil and gas Russia in turn made available to China, India, and Turkey set those countries’ transitions back just as much. Meanwhile, several countries in Europe, with Germany leading the way, are increasing their coal power footprint out of energy security concerns, thereby replacing natural gas with the most polluting of any energy source. And as a footnote, black market energy commodities, which are what much of Russia’s exports have become, are usually dirty, and shadow tankers are often leaky and almost always uninsured, creating the potential for catastrophic environmental and economic accidents.      

But it is Ukraine that is bearing the brunt of the world’s weakening will to ostracize Russia. With winter less than a month away, the Kremlin has reduced most of Ukraine’s own energy sector to rubble, making it likely that many Ukrainians may die this winter from cold, hunger, or medical conditions that could have been treated if their hospitals had heating and electricity.

The failure to stop Russia from continuing its war of devastation in Ukraine has real and tragic consequences. It isn’t too late to restrain Russia, to fully isolate it from global energy markets, but there’s little evidence of political will.

source https://time.com/7095298/europe-hooked-russian-oil-gas-ukraine/

Harris Urges Detroit to ‘Break Some Records’ as Early Vote Begins in Critical Michigan

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

As early voting kicked off on Saturday in Detroit, Kamala Harris was in one of the city’s high school gyms delivering a simple message: early votes are the best way to block Donald Trump’s return to power.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“Now who’s the capital of producing records?” the Vice President asked in in a city with a legacy of musical hits. “So we are going to break some records here in Detroit today.”

Harris was joined by superstar Lizzo for a high-energy rally near an otherwise sleepy park that houses an early voting site.  Afterward, in an impressive flex of organizing power, the crowd marched across the street to the park where they could be among the city’s first to cast ballots for Harris.

“If you ask me if America is ready for its first woman President, all I have to say is it’s about damn time,” Lizzo said, riffing on one of her biggest hits.

Early vote began in Detroit on Saturday and expands statewide next weekend. Democrats traditionally have banked huge numbers in Michigan before Election Day, although no one seems sure which way that might break this year. Democrats anecdotally feel like they have a slight advantage, but Republicans insist they are on new ground given the GOP’s renewed interest in banking votes early, after Trump assailed the practice in 2020.

Hence the deployment of Lizzo, the Detroit-born artist who made the case for Harris in a high school gym under basketball-caliber lights and lacking any concert-level sound systems. The stripped-down setting seemed like it was designed to energize the residents of this decidedly local neighborhood rather than suggest an arena-caliber event. Campaign aides say that was no accident, as the goal was to attract voters in the neighborhood, and then have them cross the street and vote.

Both Harris and Trump have spent the last 36 hours barnstorming Michigan, whose 15 electoral college votes are seen by both campaigns as critical. On Friday evening, Trump struggled with microphone troubles at a disjointed rally where he tried to reframe his bad-mouthing of Detroit a week earlier.

Along with Lizzo, Harris was joined at the rally by six national union presidents and plenty of local pols. As the speeches rolled on, Harris’ campaign aides shrewdly worked the gym, hoovering up voter and volunteer contact information.

“The race is tight. It’s going to be hard work. But we like hard work,” said Harris, who was soon racing to the airport to rally early voters in Georgia. “We’re here because this is a working day.”

As will be every single day between this and Election Day.

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.

source https://time.com/7095205/kamala-harris-lizzo-detroit/

What a $25k Down Payment Aid From Harris Could Really Mean For First-Time Homebuyers

When Bridgette Blount’s first grandchild was born in 2020, she knew it was time to transition from renting to homeownership. Her rent had been going up for years, and she wanted to ensure that her grandchild could come stay with her, play in her yard, and develop the kind of close relationship with her that she had once cherished with her own grandmother.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

It was thanks to a down payment assistance program that Blount was able to find a townhouse she loved in Blaine, Minnesota, within her price range, and move in June of this year. 

Now, she says her monthly mortgage payments are less expensive than her rent was.

Blount, 57, utilized the Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s homeownership program, as well as the Advancing Black Homeownership Program, designed specifically for Black Americans, in order to help her close on her home.

“Down payment assistance not only helped me be able to buy in desirable areas, it helped me be able to afford a home in the communities that I would feel comfortable in as a single Black woman,” Blount tells TIME. “So what that buying power afforded me was the ability to find a home within my median income, but still in an area where the quality of homes around me is increasing instead of decreasing.”

The typical down payment for first-time homebuyers was 8% in 2023, the highest since 1997, according to the National Association of Realtor. That can be an obstacle for many would-be homeowners, but down payment assistance programs can help, and the Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s program is just one of many that exists.

The obstacle of a down payment is particularly difficult for first-generation homebuyers, who, according to research from the Urban Institute, face far more challenges pulling together down payments than those who benefit from intergenerational wealth.

Ahead of the 2024 election, Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has placed the housing crisis—with an emphasis on down payment assistance programs—on the federal map. During Harris’ and former President Donald Trump’s debate, the first policy to come up was housing affordability.

In one of Harris’ central and most publicized policy points, she states she will provide $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers if elected.

Blount was elated to hear of Harris’ plan. “If I’m one individual who went through this program and it changed my life in the way it did, I would be so happy and so astounded, if others could benefit from the same thing,” she says. “It could change the life of thousands of people if they knew more about the program and knew that it was attainable and within their reach.”

Read More: Here’s What Harris and Trump Have Proposed to Help the Housing Crisis

The National Association of Realtors website reiterates that a first-time home buyer is not just someone who has never owned a home, but can also refer to someone who has not owned a home in three years, or someone who once owned a home with a spouse, but now is buying on their own.

According to Shaun Donovan, former HUD secretary under former President Barack Obama, though down payment assistance alone cannot fix the housing crisis, it is “critical.”

 “There is no question that if we want to build racial equity, close the wealth gap—a whole range of stuff in the housing crisis—that this is a critical piece of doing that,” Donavan says.

However, Drew Coleman, founder of Opt Real Estate in Portland, Oregon, has his doubts about the program. Affordability is certainly the biggest obstacle for the aspiring homeowners he works with, but down payment is just one component of this—and he sees monthly payments as the bigger obstacle.

“The $25,000 assistance plan may provide short term relief for a few buyers, but it also could compound the affordability crisis,” Coleman says. “My fear is it could potentially make first time homes $25,000 more expensive right off of the bat.”

He also emphasized the housing shortage in the United States, something Donavan also emphasized as an important aspect to the housing crisis. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated in a March 2024 report that the U.S. is short 7 million affordable units for the lowest income Americans, emphasizing not just a lack in housing in general, but a lack of affordable housing.

Meanwhile, Donovan is pleased that the Harris campaign is focusing on other issues beyond down payment, such as the supply side. One such plan includes the construction of three million new housing units by the end of her first term.

“Vice President Harris will work in partnership with industry to build the housing we need, both to rent and to buy, and to take down barriers that stand in the way of building new housing, including at the state and local levels. This will make rents and mortgages cheaper,” the Harris campaign wrote in a press release on Aug. 16.

Many on the right are also focusing heavily on the supply side of housing. In a speech in September to the Economic Club of New York, Trump promised to reduce regulations and open swaths of federal land for large-scale housing construction. “Regulation costs 30% of a new home, and we will open up portions of federal land for large-scale housing construction,” he said.

Habitat for Humanity’s Chief Program Officer Shereese Turner also emphasized that down payment assistance alone is not enough to ensure Habitat, and others organizing similar programs, are not “contributing to another housing crisis” by placing homebuyers in homes that they cannot “sustain.” Turner says Habitat for Humanity’s program focuses more heavily on “low to moderate or moderate to middle income” homebuyers who are seeking to become a homebuyer, but the burden of rent prevents them from saving money for fees like down payment and closing costs.

Turner highlights that Habitat’s program in particular also ensures that new homeowners will not spend more than 30% of their income on their mortgage payment. A critical part of down payment assistance, Turner says, is not just “home creation” but “stabilization and preservation,” particularly for communities of color.

Turner herself utilized down payment assistance programs when she was buying her first home, an opportunity she says her parents were never able to afford.

With a federal program, Turner says that homebuyers can stack their opportunities and resources, and potentially have even more opportunities to buy. Yet, she wants to ensure that any government programs are “transparent” and include the stabilization and post-buying support that Habitat prioritizes.

“We just need to make sure that we’re layering this down payment assistance that is really going to benefit the homebuyer and not just benefit the person who’s administering it,” she said. “But, the more that we are creating homeownership opportunities, the more we have to talk about how these homebuyers can be successful in homeownership too.”

source https://time.com/7095175/down-payment-harris-plan-could-mean-for-first-time-homebuyers/

How Exhibiting Forgiveness Explores the Limits of Religion and Absolution

In 2016, Titus Kaphar made The Jerome Project, a short documentary in which he confronted how his father’s abuse and drug use harmed his childhood. But upon completing it, he discovered that he had only scratched the surface. “When I finished the project, what was clear to me is that it did a good job of telling us where we were, but not how we got there,” says Kaphar.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

So he turned to fiction. In his new film Exhibiting Forgiveness, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and hits theaters October 18, Kaphar casts André Holland as Tarrell, a celebrated American painter (as Kaphar is) whose life is unmoored by the re-emergence of his abusive father La’Ron (John Earl Jelks) and the fragile health of his mother Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). La’Ron and Joyce’s religious beliefs create the expectation that Tarrell will grant easy absolution to La’Ron, thrusting Tarrell into a chaotic battle between his religious values and the long-standing hurt he still carries. The film breaks from a long tradition in Black cinema of relying on religion, and the forgiveness it demands, as an all-healing balm. Instead, it offers a raw and realistic portrayal of what it looks like to process childhood trauma well into adulthood. And it allowed Kaphar himself to dig deeper. “Allowing fiction to play a part in Exhibiting Forgiveness allowed me to go into my father’s head in a way that a documentary wouldn’t allow me to do.”

Kaphar’s art has often provided space to revisit the past. The Jerome Project was born out of a search in prison records for information about his father. In that process, he not only discovered mugshots of 97 other incarcerated Black men who share his father’s first and last name, he also interviewed them and painted Renaissance and Byzantine religious-inspired portraits of them on gold-leaf backgrounds dipped in tar. His other works further reclaim history through white-washed portraits of Black Civil War soldiers, collages that place Black people’s faces in confrontation with slave-holding white figures, and devotional scenes that refigure Black people into Biblical text.

Exhibiting Forgiveness is a culmination of the deep hurt and conflicting feelings that have inspired his work. “A friend of mine said after seeing the film, ‘You’ve been painting this movie your entire life,’” says Kaphar. His close partner in the movie’s conception is Holland, an actor whose inviting gaze and coy smile has powered Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, Ava DuVernay’s Selma, and Steven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird. Watching the desperate heartache and frank ruminations that carve Tarrell’s ups and downs, you get the sense that only together could Kaphar and Holland have arrived at such an honest portrayal of religion’s limits for processing generational trauma.

---

Holland and Kaphar began to develop their bond months before the latter said “action.” In a bid for realism, the director invited his star to his studio in New Haven, Conn. to learn how to paint. During that period, the pair also learned about each other. “We have very different relationships to our fathers, but we still profoundly connected with each other about our fathers,” Holland explains during our Zoom conversation ahead of the movie’s theatrical release.

“André commitment to his practice is profound and pretty much the only reason why this film could work,” explains Kaphar. “You need to have somebody who’s willing to go all the way. It’s not for the faint of heart.” Holland: “This territory that we are trafficking in was obviously pretty heavy. We made a silent pact to take care of each other throughout the journey, to continually check in with each other to make sure that we were OK.”

Read more: The 33 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2024

Those months together also instilled trust between actor and director. Exhibiting Forgiveness is a film packed with intense breakdowns and triggering confrontations. Tarrell is afflicted by post-traumatic nightmares of his father’s violent drug addiction. When he thinks back on the abuse his father doled out on him and his mother, Tarrell is afflicted by post-traumatic nightmares of his father’s violent addiction and fits of rage. In one heartbreaking scene, La’Ron forces a teenage Tarrell to continue mowing a white woman’s lawn even after seeing Tarrell’s foot be impaled by a nail. Those nightmares have caused Tarrell to feel a debilitating angst that he’ll repeat his father’s mistakes with own young son.

Digging up such personal pain understandably took an emotional toll on Kaphar. “Watching André go through what I went through broke me,” he recalls. “He made me feel the emotions that I had been suppressing.”

Holland channeled his personal struggles too. The actor’s own father was facing cancer when he first received Kaphar’s script. Holland recorded conversations with his dad that later informed his approach to Tarrell. John Earl Jelks, who plays La’Ron, similarly conjured his relationship with his own dad. The set therefore became a “space for all of our dads to be there with us and to be in communion with all of those spirits,” says Holland.  

---

That spirituality exists in every frame of Kaphar’s film, especially in the act of painting. It’s telling that the only place where Tarrell finds peace—apart from being with his young son and R&B singer wife Aisha (Andra Day)—is in his studio. There, art is not only a meditation. It’s also devotional.

Kaphar painted several works for the film, each in different stages of completion to give the impression of Holland actually crafting these pieces. These oils are inspired by Tarrell’s on-screen memories, featuring neighborhood scenes of kids jumping fences and riding bikes, and portraits of other characters. The pieces do not feature the same scenes of radiant angels or images of Christ that typifies some of Kaphar’s work. But he still believes that even the film’s pieces—which are being exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles until Nov. 2—are firmly rooted in his religious upbringing. “The people who love me most in the world are believers. The people who saved me are believers,” explains Kaphar. “Even though my spiritual journey looks a little different than, say, my grandmother and my mom’s spiritual journey, my values are rooted in what those women taught me.”

Perhaps it’s the intentional blending of craft and the divine that makes Exhibiting Forgiveness such a clear-eyed critique of absolution’s finite capacity for closure. Because unlike films like The Green Mile, The Color Purple, Soul Food, the Best Man series, Kingdom Come, and more, which often hasten forgiveness to speed toward neat resolutions, Exhibiting Forgiveness doesn’t suppose the problems between Tarrell and La’Ron can be waved away by a magic wand. And unlike many of those films, its avoidance of forgiveness as a simple fix in turn avoids shifting the responsibility of the sin away from the sinner to the victim.

Read more: The 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades

In one evocative scene, Tarrell’s mother, Joyce sits with her son on a park bench, pleading with him to forgive La’Ron. She even quotes the Bible—Matthew 6:14-15: “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” Tarrell responds with a biblical story himself, that of God testing Abraham’s faith by demanding he kill his only son Isaac. Tarrell uses the scripture to demonstrate how God’s word can neither be taken wholesale nor be used to mend all wounds. 

With roots in Alabama’s Southern Black church, Holland found the charged scene difficult to approach. “I have, I’ll say, a deeply ingrained reverence for the biblical. And by that, I mean, the idea of saying a cuss word in the same sentence as a Bible verse for me was grounds to get me sent straight to hell,” he explains with a chuckle. “So I was nervous about that.” 

Before he even began filming Exhibiting Forgiveness, however, Holland was already reflecting on religion. He is presently studying for his Masters in Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. Since beginning his studies, he’s thought about the origins of religion, how we define it, and the ways several doctrines have changed. “Religion’s been used in a variety of different ways throughout history. It’s been used to inspire folks to do great things, and it’s also been used to justify some pretty horrific things as well. It’s both. I was bound up in that struggle as we were on set. I could not decouple those two things,” says Holland.

---

For Tarrell’s father, religion is used as a pathway back to his son. The film is smartly slippery on whether La’Ron’s transformation—whereby he sobers up and tries to make amends for his past—is totally genuine. Often in conversations with Tarrell, La’Ron, like Joyce, wields the Bible to demand absolution. But he never takes responsibility for his physical abuse of Tarrell and Joyce or his drug habit. He positions them as character-building obstacles. Because La’Ron doesn’t provide adequate grounds for reconciliation, ultimately, Tarrell is left to do much of the emotional work of moving on. It’s a one-sided, inward turn that sets up a final meeting between father and son that doesn’t necessarily end in catharsis but ambiguity: Does Tarrell forgive his father?

The fresh result of the film’s conclusion is to refrain from granting the viewer or the character a neat ending. Kaphar hopes to inspire viewers to inspect the toxic relationships they’ve carried on for the wrong reasons. “The way that I was taught forgiveness was to turn the other cheek and forgive at all costs. I’ve done that often to my detriment,” explained Holland. “I think that one of the things I learned in the process of doing this film that I’m continuing to learn is forgiveness with boundaries.” 

And yet, the trick Kaphar manages to pull off is never making La’Ron wholly unlikable. Kaphar crafts the on-screen father as flawed but not evil. That nuance is the result of decades worth of introspection which have led to an uncommon honesty and vulnerability that courses throughout Exhibiting Forgiveness. It also allowed Kaphar to come to a life-altering conclusion while making the film.  

“My father’s been struggling for most of my life, and I needed to be honest about that,” explains Kaphar. “I can say this now: I still love him. More importantly now, after the process of making this film, I realize that my father is not the villain of my narrative.”

source https://time.com/7094253/exhibiting-forgiveness-titus-kaphar-andre-holland-interview/