Compensation
Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis
Written by Marc Arthur Chéry
Starring John Earl Jelks and Michelle A. Banks 
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour and 32 minutes
4K Restoration opens in New York February 21

by Daniel Pecoraro, Staff Writer

I don’t think I need to give too hard a sell on 1999’s Compensation making a return to the big screen this week. It’s been deemed a landmark film by luminaries who far outshine this writer, and this re-release comes on the heels of the Library of Congress–which is, as of this writing seemingly the only active entity of Congress–adding the film to the National Film Registry last winter, alongside such eclectic fare as Chelsea Girls (dir. Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey, 1966), Beverly Hills Cop (dir. Martin Brest, 1984), My Family (dir. Gregory Nava, 1995), and—yes, really—Spy Kids (dir. Robert Rodriguez, 2001). But amid all that is going on in the United States today, this new 4K restoration from the original 16mm negative feels more timely, and more relevant, than ever. With a segregationist regime exhibiting a tendency of historic erasure and a desire to tear systems of inclusion, welcoming, and support asunder, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film provides myriad antidotes to the present social illnesses. 

And it’s also just a dang good movie, a kind of mostly narrative feature that doubles as a historic homage (it is, to that point, fitting that new captions were designed for the restoration by Alison O’Daniel, director of 2024’s similarly structured The Tuba Thieves). Titled in honor of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s 1905 poem of the same name and dealing in the same themes of love, death, and communication, the film features two interwoven storylines. After a documentary introduction to Chicago in the 1900s, as the first wave of the Great Migration reaches its heights, we meet Malindy Brown (Michelle A. Banks), a minister’s daughter with intelligence and grace. Malindy is, as the film’s title card notes, “a woman of much talent and ample learning,” having attended the Kendall School for the Deaf until the school segregated and expelled its Black student body. We see Malindy in a regular state of creative production with entries in her diary and her piece work as a seamstress for the family of her friend Tildy (Nirvana Cobb). Together, as they sit by the Chicago lakefront, Malindy meets Arthur Jones (John Earl Jelks), “a lonely migrant [from Mississippi] of meager means.” Malindy and Arthur try to navigate between the worlds of d/Deaf and hearing, the literate and illiterate, and the new migrants and Black elite in Chicago.

Cut to early ‘90s Chicago, back to the shoreline (a constant, multisensory presence in the film): we meet Malaika Brown (Banks), a printer and artist in a state of meditative, flowing movement. Nico Jones (Jelks), a children’s librarian in the Chicago Public Library, runs on the beach past Malaika. He’s immediately smitten, despite their different emotional wavelengths (with accompanying soundtracks to match, serene flute clashing with propulsive percussion) and Malaika telling Nico (via words drawn in the sand), “I don’t go out with hearing people.”

Despite the two couples’ initial differences, mirroring courtships emerge, with trips to the cinema—including Malindy and Arthur attending an all-Black silent picture-within-a-picture—and with Jelks’s characters developing a speaking and listening capacity for ASL and, in Arthur’s case, reading as well. In both storylines’ masc leads, there is a sense of thoughtfulness, of genuine curiosity and care, without the angle of saviorism or becoming an interpreter for their new partners. Because Banks’s characters need no saving; she especially shines in her dual role of Malindy and Malaika, two smart, independent, charming characters. And despite their circle’s protestations—Malindy’s mother disapproves of her seeing someone beneath her social station and Malaika and Nico’s friends question the prudence of a hearing-d/Deaf coupling–both duos try to make things work. The romantic angle is ultimately challenged by a pair of diagnoses (of the tuberculosis that felled, among others, Dunbar and of the HIV that still affects African Americans at a rate significantly higher than white people), along with a still growing ability to communicate.

Davis packs a lot into the ninety-plus-minute span of the film. It is, at once, a tribute to historic and contemporary Black d/Deaf culture, an homage to the Black silent film industry of the early twentieth century, an examination of the impact of the Great Migration, and a moving appreciation of the poetic and performing arts, exemplified by a dance set to a melodic interpretation of Dunbar by Malaika’s best friend Bill (Christopher Smith). I would also put it in the Afrofuturist canon, an exercise in looking both backward and forward to expand the scope of stories that can be told about Black life and experiences. But above all, I think Compensation is a study in the sense of place and of the senses–the sounds, vibrations, sights, and emotional resonance–that spots like the Chicago lakefront evoke. And of course, the sense that love can lead to understanding, of shared growth, and of connection across seemingly impenetrable lines.

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