In South Florida, a teenager is in a state of persistent poverty as he tries to escape from that closed circuit. It's a teenage miracle named David attending a magnetic school for academically gifted youth. Though David, played by newcomer Akely McDowell, lives in extreme poverty, he continues to struggle between two different worlds as he travels between streets and new paths
David Makes Man has growing pains. But at its best, it's a beautiful coming-of-age story about a black teenager, the people who want him to live up to all his promise, and a country that doesn't seem to have room for him.
McCraney's gift as a storyteller is to get inside the pressures faced by young, specifically young black men and enable the audience to intimately understand why David makes the choices that he does...
The rhapsodic and dreamy timbre of Moonlight, the film that won the Best Picture Oscar in 2017, comes to life again in David Makes Man, a gorgeous, attention-grabbing new series on the OWN Network.
It offers haunting themes, the impact of abuse and trauma, which is shown through David's dreams, waking reveries and imagination. While the latter is the most challenging aspect of the series, it's also what makes "David Makes Man" distinct.
The story of David is pretty complex all by itself; with some of McRaney's artistic flourishes, though, he really brings the viewer into the mind of David, who really wants to break out of his situation but is scared he never will.
McCraney and his collaborators do a superb job of etching in these different communities and the people in them, and of getting us to want to protect David in a way he'd be afraid to ask anyone in his own life to do.
