Free Inquiry 2: “Sinners”

The film I watched this week was Sinners directed by Ryan Coogler. This film, made in 2025, has been nominated for 16 Academy Rewards which is a record, some of the top categories being Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score.

Sinners focuses on the story of two brothers in 1932 who return to their hometown in Mississippi to open a juke joint. The film focuses on one day and follows the events that occur as the brothers go about opening their juke joint that evening. As the film progresses, unexpected challenges are revealed and the film begins to take a horrific turn. A more detailed, but spoiler filled, plot summary can be found here at imdb.com, another resource I forgot to mention in my first post but that I will be using for my posts going forward.

A blog post that I found did an excellent job of describing the use of music in Sinners can be found here.

What I found most impressive about the film Sinners that I will be focusing my analysis on is the music. My education background is focused in music, having earned a Bachelors of Music Education in 2025 so one of the first things I tend to be drawn to when I watch a film is the score. Sinners not only embraces music but centers a large portion of its message around the engagement of music and its meaning both politically and artistically. The film utilizes a vast amount of Blues music which, being a film that engages in a narrative surrounding Black culture and the Civil Rights Movement, can be seen as a strategically placed political statement on the oppression of Black voices in Western culture. Within the realm of music, Black voices have been oppressed while colonial voices have engaged in the stealing of Black music genres. This is seen in this instance through the use of Blues music, a genre that has strong influence from the music of West and Central Africa. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Sinners includes the use of traditional Irish music as an opposition to Blues music, creating an interesting dichotomy between two voices that have been oppressed in different ways and allowing the viewer to ponder on what it means to be multicultural vs antiracist.

One of the most powerful scenes in the film occurs when a musician plays a Blues song and the power of the song connects the music of Black musicians from the past as well as the future. This connection shows the true raw force of a people who will not be silenced and the music which acts as a representation of this strength and culture. Another very interesting concept that was used in the Sinners was the use of aspect ratio which switched from widescreen to fullscreen every time music was played in the film, further highlighting the importance it holds within the film.

I have included below a video of this scene.