A film that unites the talents of Denzel Washington and Michael B. Jordan should have been on every film buff’s radar. After all, Washington’s considered one of the greatest actors alive, while Jordan’s career has skyrocketed, including leading the upcoming horror epic Sinners. Yet A Journal For Jordan, which features Jordan in a lead role and Washington as director, wasn’t well regarded. Critical opinion leaned toward it being “overly sentimental,” and it wound up bombing at the box office, pulling in a measly $6.7 million on a $25 million budget. It’s a shame because A Journal for Jordan has a solid love story at its core, which Washington and Jordan help bring to life.
What Is ‘A Journal for Jordan’ About?
A Journal for Jordan takes its name from the memoir written by Dana Canedy (played by Chanté Adams) and her relationship with soldier Charles Monroe King (played by Jordan.) The film version of A Journal for Jordan plays as your standard “opposites attract” romantic drama: Dana is an ambitious journalist who, having gotten out of a long-term relationship, is more focused on her career than romance. Charles is dedicated to his military career while also juggling a daughter from his previous marriage. Eventually, though, the two fall in love, are married, and even have a baby named Jordan…but tragedy strikes when Charles is deployed to Iraq in 2001 and is killed by an IED. A grieving Dana learns that Charles sent her a book full of life lessons he penned for Jordan and starts to share those lessons with her son as he grows up.
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It’s the relationship between Dana and Charles that forms the foundation of A Journal for Jordan, and it works thanks to the chemistry that Jordan and Adams share. Jordan especially works to sell the “opposites attract” angle, tamping down his immense charisma to play a man who’s fairly emotionally reserved and lives a simple life. Case in point: one of the best running jokes throughout A Journal for Jordan is that Charles wears the same beat-up pair of sneakers. Yet as time passes by, he opens up to Dana, showing a rather sensitive side. The conflicts in their relationship also feel believable; one tense scene has Dana and Charles arguing because he had to help out one of his soldiers. While he thinks of his unit as family, she reminds him that she’s a part of his life too and deserves the same attention. It only makes their reunion all the sweeter…and Charles’ death hit far harder.
Denzel Washington Utilizes a Unique Storytelling Method for ‘A Journal for Jordan’
Much like Charles Monroe King, Denzel Washington takes a simple, direct approach to directing A Journal for Jordan. Like his previous directorial work with Fences and The Great Debaters, his strength is in the emotional bonds between characters and the raw, honest conversations they have. But there’s one unique trick Washington utilizes when it comes to A Journal for Jordan: he takes a non-chronological approach to the narrative, cutting between different points in time. The very first scene is set in the modern day, establishing that Dana is a single mother and struggling to still hold onto her job while raising a two-year-old. Another scene cuts from a quiet moment between Dana and Charles to the newscast depicting the events of 9/11; the jarring set-up echoes how many people felt on that day and adds to Dana’s dread as she races to phone Charles and see if he’s alright.
Washington and screenwriter Virgil Williams also had a major resource to lean on while filming A Journal for Jordan, as the real-life Dana Canedy was heavily involved in production. She even took some of her late husband’s belongings to the set to let the cast and crew understand the gravity of the story they were bringing to life:
“The first day we went to the set, I took a small duffel bag that had Charles’ Purple Heart in it. It had his dog tags, and it had the actual physical journal and some other items to give [the actors] a sense of us – of who he was – to remind them that there was a real soldier behind the story…For everybody there, it touched them deeply.”
A Journal for Jordan might not be what people expected from Denzel Washington and Michael B. Jordan’s first movie working together, but it deserved a far better reception. The fact that Washington was able to take such a personal story and bring it to life while also honoring Dana Canedy’s wishes is a threshold that’s rarely achieved in the realm of films based on real-life events.
- Release Date
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December 25, 2021
- Writers
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Dana Canedy, John Burnham Schwartz, Virgil Williams
