![]() ![]() In that way, The Long Song joins Amma Asante’s Belle in presenting its audience with a view of the British Empire’s heyday told from a different perspective of someone raised within it and directly affected by the racism and oppression that fuelled it. It is July who is given the direct close-up and a fourth wall break that tells us instantly that this is her story and not the kind of nineteenth century tale we usually get. Caroline’s tantrum is witnessed in wider shots with any closer shot of her obscured slightly by a lace curtain. Director Mahalia Belo alludes to this visually during this sequence. Williams allows a knowing nod to this at the start of the episode by explicitly stating that this isn’t a story about a white woman trapped on a plantation and waiting for her love to arrive. Importantly, it’s storytelling from a perspective that viewers of period dramas don’t often get to witness, that of a slave herself. Storytelling and its importance is at the heart of it all, from the framing device of the older woman writing her narrative, to the title cards that signal different stages of July’s story. ![]()
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