Thanks to the podcast Switchblade Sisters for recommending the 2019 indie drama Clemency, directed by Chinonye Chukwu. Alfre Woodard plays a prison warden who carries out death penalty sentences, and the job is taking an emotional toll on her between comforting the families of the inmates, listening to anti-death penalty protests outside, going through routine procedures with inmates like last meals or last talks with loved ones, and watching them die.
Woodard is so great at just showing the weight of this job in her expressions and quiet moments, and how she feels lonely, yet, despite that her husband is pushing for her to retire, she sees it as her profession and compartmentalizing it to cope. Special credit also goes to Aldis Hodge as a death row inmate accused of killing a cop nearly 15 years ago, struggling with his emotions and feeling hopeless, and Danielle Brooks as his ex high school girlfriend who visits him and gives a great monologue about the choices she had to make for her own protection when he got arrested.
I saw this on Hulu, and am happy I checked this out, it’s an underseen film that shows another side of Alfre Woodard’s great screen performances.
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