‘Compensation’ Review: Still Rebellious

As a word, “Compensation” evokes labor. In the director Zeinabu irene Davis’s beautifully woven drama of the same name, work does get its close-ups. But it is the loves, labors and vulnerabilities two couples in two different eras experience that make this black-and-white film from 1999 such an elegant and presciently inventive work.

Michelle A. Banks, a pioneering deaf theater actor, portrays both Malindy, a dressmaker in 1910, and Malaika, an aspiring graphic designer in the 1990s. John Earl Jelks (“Exhibiting Forgiveness”) plays Arthur, a migrant up from Mississippi, and Nico, a children’s librarian in contemporary Chicago.

Each couple meets sweet on the shore of Lake Michigan. (Scenes were shot at Indiana Dunes National Park.) With a fishing rod strapped to his back, a mandolin in his hand and a straw hat atop his head, Arthur looks like a folk troubadour as he heads toward Malindy and her young friend Tildy (Nirvana Cobb) napping nearby. He asks Malindy if she wants some of the fish he’s caught. After trying to make herself understood by signing, Malindy writes on a chalkboard that she can’t hear. Arthur looks at the sign and tells her sheepishly he can’t read. It’s an impossibly poignant moment in a film about the intersections of the deaf and the hearing worlds, the Black middle and working classes, but also the educated and the soon-to-be-educated.

For Nico and Malaika’s encounter, the film leans on a bit of rom-com charm. (“Compensation” was written by Marc Arthur Chéry, the director’s frequent collaborator and spouse.) Looking serious, Malaika moves through tai chi forms, Nico jogs by, smiles, stops, jogs back, beaming. She is not impressed as playful thought-bubble intertitles make plain.

Davis uses the form of early silent movies to evocative and economic effect. How do you shoot a period picture on a tight budget? Imbue rich archival stills with the sounds of life — babies gurgling, horses clomping, train whistles sounding. Add a beguiling musical score while you’re at it. Scenes of the early 1900s are buoyed by the composer-pianist Reginald R. Robinson’s ragtime notes; the late ’90s by Atiba Y. Jali’s percussive, African-centered grooves. (The movie is open captioned.)