When Lucky allows himself to lean a little into the groove of the classic soul music playing on the radio of his newly purchased vintage car, it’s a moment of simple beauty for the simple gem “The Book of Colors.” The same is true of writer-director David Fortune’s feature debut. It slides into a subtle, gentle groove in telling the story of Lucky (William Catlett) and his 11-year-old son Mason (Jeremiah Daniels) as they begin to navigate a space rearranged by an unexpected and upending death. To say that Lucky is the newly single father of a child with Down Syndrome seems apt and somewhat overstates what he is treated with with calm, impeccable care.
“Color Book” delivers lo-fi fun (like Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves the Sunshine”) and champions high-definition clarity (cinematographer Nikolaus Summerer’s crisp palette of inky charcoal, soft grays and luminous whites). However, what this stand-up drama really offers is a new class. Call it “deep sincerity,” the director captures without flash or pretense the physical, emotional, and even spiritual lives of his heroes. Charles Burnett’s classic “The Sheep Killer,” or Garrett Bradley’s documentary “Time,” come to mind as analogues.
As with the best films, it trains its gaze on an ordinary life lived with quiet patience, not much and everything happens. A mother playing with her son. Father and son making pancakes. Child drawing. A father helps his son put on a shirt. The mother is then commemorated. And that son and father begin to reckon with her absence together, separately, and sometimes not at all, given the recentness of the tragedy.
The rhythms of time are a key element in the color book. The day goes by like a lifetime, but being late to the destination remains a nagging worry. This strange twist of minutes and hours makes sense in light of the deaths of Lucky’s wife and Mason’s mother. But so does the pressure to achieve something — in this case, getting Mason to his first baseball game.
Brandi Evans portrays the sad Tammy with an easy verve (that invites viewers to miss her, too). After her brief appearance stringing beads with Mason at the beginning of the film, she haunts Lucky in fleeting flashbacks.
Shortly after the memorial service — complete with testimonials so meticulous that they might make you check whether the film is a documentary — the decor scene is revisited. Only this time, Lucky and Mason share an arts and crafts moment. Something feels tense. Try as she might, Lucky’s engagement is less than enjoyable. However, he carefully adheres to their routine, leading Mason to grace, brush teeth, and pray before bed. “It’ll just be you and me for now,” he told Mason.
When Lucky tries to fulfill his promise to take Mason to the ballgame, the duo is thrown curveball after curveball. Some of it comes through external forces. Others are the result of what might be considered small, immediate punishment. Wearing his striped baseball jersey, Mason wants to take home a balloon that has taken on additional meaning for him in the game. Lucky says no. There is a brief confrontation between the solemn father and the scowling child. The balloon remains. But others will come into the picture and Lucky may wish he had said “yes.”
“The Colored Book” is certainly a meditation on fathers and children. It’s also a tribute to the unspoken ways in which Black fathers show up and show up. Time and time again, Lucky emerges from the veil of his grief to greet his young son. Frustration melts away. Passion rises. When language fails them but not their love, they resort to a playful muscle-man routine, flexing their biceps, squatting, and baring their teeth with faux effort. It is the not-so-secret language of father and son. Time and time again, Fortune captures the individual quality of this newly formed duo. (Composer Dabney Morris’s music often sets the tone between sadness and the silent grandeur of love.) He’s right to trust the emotional pull of these two and doesn’t over-explain or deviate from their story.
Even before Lucky had his first memories of better days, Catlett carried the weight and bittersweet power of the memories in his face. We can see Lucky trying to recalibrate his role as a sole supervisor, mixing tenderness and strength.
As 11-year-old Mason, Daniels embraces the film’s aesthetic as well, one that holds silence and honors stillness. There are moments when Mason is laughably stubborn in his unwavering stance. He stares at his father the same way Lucky stares: with curiosity, adoration, and sometimes low-grade exasperation.
This portrait of father and son includes a sketch of the community and place. A particularly poignant scene in a film of no shortage occurs in a subway car when Lucky and Mason meet family friend Meech (Njema Williams) who asks Mason to draw him in the notebook full of pictures Mason carries around. It is clear from this and a previous exchange with Lucky’s friend Rico (rapper Kia Shine Coleman) that Mason is being embraced by his parents’ friends. With nuance, the writer-director makes this closeness a given and tangible.
“Color Book” is set in Atlanta – a cold and humid ATL. Lucky and Mason’s public transit ride to the stadium offers views of a large, outlying city, with its mixture of lightly industrial stops between modest or shabby neighborhoods, low-rise apartment buildings and storefronts.
Where there is affection, there is also exhaustion. It is Lucky’s bone exhaustion that leads to the two separating. We’re less worried about this than Lucky. Viewers may be angry with him, but we know how hard he tried to do right by his son and his late wife.
But others will be skeptical, seeing neglect and interference in ways that are entirely appropriate but potentially destructive as well. The MARTA worker in question manages to be both a potential hero and a villain in the narrative. She’s not the only woman showing care. In a restaurant, the waitress (Teri J. Vaughn) serves dessert.
When Lucky pays his way, one senses that this beautiful, wounded duo will succeed, even thrive. Given this poignant debut, the same goes for the impressively good Fortune.