Master of Light movie review & film summary (2022)

The film’s co-producer, Roger Ross Williams, directed one of the most astonishing films I’ve seen about the transformative power of art, 2016’s “Life Animated,” which explores how Disney films helped an autistic man connect with the surrounding world that had once seemed out of reach. “Master of Light” is every bit as profound and insightful in illuminating how painting has had a therapeutic role in Morton’s life, enabling him to grapple with his anger at a system designed to entrap people in his situation. His stated aim is to carry into the future artistic traditions that “people of African descent have not had a dignified part in” over the past centuries. 

There’s a striking 360-degree pan around Morton walking through an art museum as he finds himself surrounded by the framed faces of Caucasians. He compares his experience of finding himself shackled up in Oklahoma to being on an auction block as his prison was selected for him. Many of the film’s most moving moments center on Morton’s interactions with his nephew, who expresses his fear in light of the horrific murders of Black people at the hands of police that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement. Morton argues that it is, in fact, white perpetrators such as these who fear the giant within people like his nephew who has now woken up, and it’s wonderful to see the budding young artist penning rap songs as a way of tackling his demons.   

As I watched Boesten’s film, I kept being reminded of what Bratton had to say to me about finding strength in forgiveness. “If I had held onto everything that happened, I wouldn’t be here,” he told me. “I would be upset somewhere in a bar, mad at the world.” I imagine Morton feels the same way, and indeed, there is a moment in “Master of Light” in which it appears that he is ready to sever his ties with his mother for good, enraged at her seeming efforts to halt him from succeeding in life. Yet he later tells his therapist that he ultimately wants to believe his mother, who denies her children’s accusations that she sent her son to jail in exchange for avoiding her incarceration. In many ways, this film would make a hugely rewarding double bill with Bratton’s “The Inspection,” considering how both films take an uncommonly frank and unsentimental look at how one can persevere in the face of rejection.