Exhibiting Forgiveness, Biology of Father and Son
It gets even better on a re-watch.
[SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT]
What It’s Really About
At its heart, Exhibiting Forgiveness is about how abuse, especially from parents, can imprint on children. It’s about the quiet, internal labor of unpacking that abuse, and deciding which parts to carry forward and which to finally set down.
Tarrell (played by André Holland) doesn’t rage. He absorbs. He processes. He paints.
The consistent focus on the details of Tarrell’s pieces make this movie feel so intimate and yet expansive.
The integration of Tarrell’s paintings with the cinematography blurs art and reality.
Some shots feel like they were meant to hang in a gallery. Others catch you off guard like the imagined portraits Tarrell sees on street corners, or the haunting symmetry of a flame painting placed between father and son during a pivotal moment.
In my interpretation the visuals reflect how memory, imagination, and trauma coexist. It makes for such a fascinating narrative ride.
The Opening Sequence
The first six minutes might be some of the most enriching filmmaking I saw in 2024 (it’s release year). We start inside Tarrell’s art—literally.
The production logos are woven into his work and into the studio interior, and one of his paintings slowly transitions into a real-life shot of a homeless man (who we later learn is his estranged father). Over this, Tarrel narrates a James Baldwin quote:
“If the relationship of father and son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons. But sometimes, biology leaves us with only smoldering embers.”
That line sets the tone. This is a story about legacy. Not necessarily the triumphant kind, but the kind that burns quietly, passed down through silence and scars.
From there, the camera follows the father, unhoused, weary, as he washes a car’s tires outside a liquor store. A kind clerk warns him that it’s too hot out to be working like that, hands him a bag of chips. I was thinking as I watched it would be better if he handed him water because it’s so hot. I just found that to be funny. A flawed goodwill gesture.
Just as that thought lands during my watch, Tarrel’s father walks into the store after washing the car, presumably for that bottle.
But inside, everything shatters.
The clerk is being assaulted during a robbery. Without hesitation, the father grabs a bat and defends him, an act of quick, raw heroism. Then he ends up retrieving his water, just before the thief slowly raises up behind him and beat him to the ground. It’s a brilliant sequence because we abruptly cut to Tarrell gasping for air, jolting awake from presumably a night terror.
But the way it is cut is like—yes—it was a night terror, but we later learn in the film, the physical pain, the mental pain, and the guilt that Tarrell feels and went through is all tied to his childhood relationship to his father. And that unresolved trauma seems to be the source of the night terrors.
So, in a way the quick cut from this liquor store robbery to Tarrell’s night terror is a wonderful way to encapsulate the heart of this story.
His wife rushes to his side, clearly distraught. This isn’t the first time its happened. Tarrel is spiraling under the weight of something unspoken, something unresolved. And then, just as we’re reeling from that emotional whiplash, their young son walks in and asks for pancakes.
Tarrell, tender and composed, asks if he wants blueberries in his pancakes. The child says no—but the very next shot is a close-up of blueberries being flipped in a pan. I’m not sure what Tarrell putting the blueberries into the pancakes means on an artistic level, but I thought it was super funny as well.
Maybe, that’s the loop, though. Trauma, tenderness, coping, care. Memory bleeding into routine. And Exhibiting Forgiveness captures all of it with eerie grace.
A Study in Quiet Pain
Watching this after something like Small Things Like These brings out an interesting parallel: both protagonists are quiet, emotionally attuned men, absorbing pain to protect the next generation. Their softness isn't weakness, it’s resilience. It’s love.
Even in the smallest moment, like Tarrell making pancakes for his son you feel the tenderness. The care. The trying.
Exhibiting Forgiveness is about reframing the past. Like paint on canvas, trauma can be worked and reworked until something new begins to take shape. The film doesn't offer easy answers. But it does offer something better: the sense that healing is possible, even if it’s messy, even if it takes time.
I give this a movie a 9/10 at the moment.