Sinnersisn’t a traditional movie.Directed, written, and produced by Ryan Coogler,Sinnersblends genres by incorporating supernatural, historical, and musical elements.Sinnersalso explores the relationship between twins.
Played byMichael B. Jordan, the Smokestack twins — Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore — have a close relationship as they set up a juke joint in their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi. When the first trailers forSinnerscame out, I was immediately turned off by the idea that Jordan was playing twins because I am a twin. Despite widespread praise, I didn’t seeSinnerswhen it played in theaters. Even when I saw it was streaming on HBO, I was reluctant to watch it. Simply put, I was skeptical that Jordan could rise above the twin tropes to which so many other actors have fallen victim.
I couldn’t help but wonder if Jordan’s twins pitted good against evil in his portrayal of Smoke and Stack inSinners. It was also possible thatSinnersincluded a separated-at-birth scenario, something akin to a switching places farce, or any number of silly twin clichés. Instead, Jordan captured much of what makes being a twin so great. And, with the help of Coogler, Jordan offered a performance that resonated with a lot of twins, including me.
In ‘Sinners,’ Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan Defied Several Tired Twin Tropes
There is no one universal twin experience, but there are common twin tropes that show up over and over again in popular culture. As a twin, I picturedSinnerswith something akin to a soap opera scenario as good and evil twins face off. Equally possible was a potential performance like what both Haley Mills and Lindsay Lohan offered audiences versions of inThe Parent Trap, twins conspiring in some way to achieve some goal by switching places and manipulating people in their proximity.
More examples ofone actor playing twins come to mind, everything from Nicolas Cage inAdaptationto even Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe and Ursula Buffay inFriends, all guilty of any number of eye-rolling clichés. Luckily,Ryan Coogler didn’t lean too much into any of the more common twin dynamics inSinners. HetoldThe New York Times, “The twins were like Cain and Abel. And I started to think, ‘What if instead of Cain killing Abel, he killed Adam?’ Like, if the two siblings were so close that nothing could come between them?”
Coogler emphasizes the closeness between Smoke and Stack but also gives them characteristics that set them apart from one another. Even the closest twins often seek out independence in some sense and Michael B. Jordan brought to life how Smoke and Stack had distinguished themselves during their earlier time in Clarksville, Mississippi.
The twins had relationships with women: Smoke with his estranged wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), and Stack with his girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld). Smoke is more inclined to be violent and less likely to smile, while Stack is the businessman who smiles and offers what appears to be empathy.To develop different mannerisms for Smoke and Stack, Jordan worked with Beth McGuire, a dialect coachhe’d met while making Coogler’sBlack Panther. Jordan credited McGuire for helping him,
“With a lot of body movement, their physical posture and stand. They both stood differently, they walked a little bit differently — they held their trauma in different places…. Just getting into all of the physicality really helped me feel confident and prepared.”
It became clear while watchingSinnersthat Michael B. Jordan was capable of pulling off a dual role. He actually went to great lengths to do so, and while it would be impossible to capture every nuance of being a twin,he did justice to the relationship between two people linked before they were born. Jordan andRyan Coogler toldPeoplethat they worked with twins to get a feel of what it was like to be a twin. Cooger enlisted his friends Noah and Logan Miller to help and explained:
“They gave us a lot of perspective on what it’s like to be an identical twin and that bond that they have… Since I’ve known these guys, they’ve shared one cell phone. So you’d call and you don’t know which one was going to answer the phone but you knew the other one was always going to be right there.The selfless love that they have for the other was a big motivator for these charactersand what would become what I think is two of [Michael B. Jordan’s] finest performances.”
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In addition to working with the Millers,Jordan pulled from his personal experiences:
“I’ve got a brother that I’m extremely tight with and close and love a lot, and best friends that are like brothers….imagining those dynamics and incorporating that into the body double that I was acting opposite, and premeditating those choices because once I do one, I have to go on the other side and play the other brother, and I’m already going against a performance that I already did before. There was a technical aspect and an emotional level of building these characters that was challenging but very rewarding.”
The End of ‘Sinners’ Hits Differently for Twins
The very end ofSinnersis what stood out to me the most. The face-off between Smoke and Stack as the juke joint burns around them is the ultimate test of their brotherhood. The implication when Smoke appears later is that he killed his vampire brother to save himself and Sammie. Smoke then unleashes his revenge on Hogwood and the other Klan members before dying of a gunshot wound.
Sammie goes to Chicago andSinnersshifts to 1992and an elderly guitar player plays the blues.It’s Sammie, wonderfully portrayed by Buddy Guy, and when he’s visited by Stack and Mary,Sammie learns Smoke spared his twin as long as he promised to never hurt Sammie. That hit hard. Just the idea of being put in a position where I’d have to hurt my twin is unfathomable, even if she were a vampire.
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“We left that door open to build on that franchise.”
But that wasn’t what really, really struck me. It was when the adult Sammie talked about the best day of his life at that juke joint before the sun went down.Stack tells him it was also the best day of his life because it was the last time he ever saw Smoke. That’s when I started crying at the beauty of what Michael B. Jordan had just said and how it captured the beauty of being a twin.
