To Live And Die And Live Review: Basir's Feature Is Intoxicating [Sundance]

ToLiveAndDieAndLive Review: Basir's Feature Is Intoxicating [Sundance] Sundance2023

Director Qasim Basir returned to the Sundance Film Festival to present his new feature film, To Live and Die and Live. In it, he crafts a beautiful love letter to Detroit, Michigan by exploring the intoxication of nightlife and highlighting alluring landscapes. Amin Joseph stars as Muhammad, a Black film director who carries several heavy burdens and even worse coping mechanisms.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY After traveling to a rebuilt Detroit, to a community he once called home and now feels alienated from, Muhammad returns to take on some family challenges as his highly beloved stepfather has just passed away. Viewers first see Muhammad fully thrusting himself into the fast life, where he partakes in binge-drinking and snorts cocaine.

With all the burdens that overtake his life, Muhammad refuses to confide in others. His coping mechanisms to endure his crushing mental health is to down bottles of alcohol quickly and snort cocaine frequently. These moments aren’t just to highlight Muhammad’s dependency on vices. Basir carefully times these sequences to showcase the toxic mindset of needing to deal with heavy burdens alone — a consequence often plaguing Black men to destruction.

As presented in his timely feature, Basir’s ambitious and authentic storytelling leaves a lot of ambiguity on the table, with only one important question intrinsically asked throughout. At what point is it crucial to put aside toxic ideas about manhood and accept help? In asking this question through his script, the film also beautifully encapsulates addiction through the perspective of Black people without having the focus centered around crackheads like many other films do.

To Live and Die and Live is the kind of film that requires viewers to watch with an open heart. It isn’t always straightforward in depicting its themes, but addiction, mental illness, and loss are never easy to explain. Without the impressive and fervent efforts from Snowfall’s Amin Joseph, Basir’s script could have easily been lost to its ambitious undertaking of multiple themes.

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