Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Chronicling the atrocities of social, political and ethnic persecution is undeniably a courageous and important act, especially when informing a largely unaware public of the horrendous events unfolding out of view. However, doing so can also take quite a toll on those recording such incidents, as seen in the graphic depictions captured in their accounts. Such was the case for South African photographer Ernest Cole (1940-1990), who snapped vivid, troubling images of apartheid in his homeland in the early 1960s. In doing so, he took his life in his hands when photographing what was occurring, often having to shoot photos clandestinely and on the run. But Cole nevertheless managed to record candid images of the disturbing treatment Black citizens received at the hands of a brutal, uncaring, insensitive White population, frequently with the complicity of other Africans. Cole eventually fled to the US, to which he was soon exiled by South African authorities for having published House of Bondage (1967), a book of photos depicting the barbarity of the country’s apartheid practices, a title that was subsequently banned in his homeland. Once stateside, though, Cole became disillusioned when he found nearly comparable, legally sanctioned prejudice impacting Blacks in the American South under the region’s Jim Crow Laws. That disillusionment, combined with a profound case of homesickness and the apparent onset of depression, he withdrew from the photographic work that made him famous. Over the next two decades, he moved about aimlessly, including stints in Sweden and elsewhere before returning to the US, gradually falling into obscurity (including the mysterious disappearance of his photographic archives) and becoming homeless on the streets of New York before his death in 1990. Writer-director Raoul Peck documents Cole’s biography through a largely first-person narrative detailing the protagonist’s life and outlooks through what are said to be his own words and photos, a novel approach to presenting his story. And, through the film’s first half, the production succeeds brilliantly at this. However, once past the midpoint, the picture loses its way. The chronological storytelling approach used at the outset is frequently abandoned in favor of a confusingly disjointed timeline. What’s more, Cole’s words at times become redundant, and the specifics behind his artistic withdrawal (and the associated effects of that decision) remain cryptic and unexplained, with many pieces of the puzzle conveniently missing. It’s also mystifying how Cole is somehow able to offer observations of events that took place after his demise, such as the miraculous but inexplicable rediscovery of much of his archive material in a Swedish bank vault in 2017. Regrettably, however, these changes in direction undermine all of the goodwill that the filmmaker worked so diligently to establish at the beginning. These are decidedly perplexing developments, to be sure, as they affect certain aspects of the film that worked well early on, such as its skillful editing, which just doesn’t hold up nearly as well in the back end. To its credit, several elements remain consistently solid throughout, such as the mesmerizing narration of LaKeith Stanfield as the protagonist, the superb original score by Alexei Aigui, and the fine selection of photos and archive footage used for telling Cole’s story. Had this release been put together as well in the second half as it had been in the first, this truly would have been an outstanding documentary. But, as it stands now, this feels like an offering that was only half finished, a regrettable outcome for a compelling story about a gifted, enigmatic figure.