Strive is a 2019 drama about a teenager from the projects in Harlem who aims to get into college, but must push against the world holding her back.
Life isn’t fair. You work hard, you do the time, you have a dream, and still it seems impossible to get want you want. But what can you do? You gotta keep going. That’s where director Robert Rippberger sets his feature length film debut Strive, a New York story about a young black woman dealing with such. It’s a familiar story of course, but Rippberger’s film, written by Sha-Risse Smith and Piper Dellums is never ordinary, an often traumatic experience that doesn’t prop up the now clichéd aspects of this genre but instead attempts to keep them pillars of a larger truth maybe far too many know all too well.
In Harlem, Kalani (Joi Starr) is a good student, one of only a few black girls in a private high school for women, holding onto a dream she sees as her only way out of a life that constantly sets her back. She is burdened with much more, her hard working but dependent mother (Chelsea Lee Williams) barely able to keep it stable, relying on Kalani to take care of her younger sister Bebe (Shaylin Becton), who is less driven and recently experimenting with sex with a dangerous neighbor. Her older brother Jacob (Ricky Flowers Jr.) is making money with drugs and hands outs from a married woman keeping him as her lover, and all around Kalani are challenges, one’s her guidance counselor Mr. Rose (Danny Glover) believes she can handle as she works to not only get to college, but be accepted at Yale.
You get the sense that Strive is purposefully designed just to be inspiring and naturally it does that but not with the usual smoke and mirrors. With Kalani, we get a grounded character in a world that isn’t marked by overwrought upheaval but rather corroded by constant unrelenting reality. Rippberger avoids dipping into the more tempting corners of possible exaggerated flourishes for the sake of drama with some surprisingly authentic moments. That’s entirely on Starr’s shoulders, who is in nearly every scene and genuinely feels as if it’s her world we’re touring. There are times that it becomes so convincing, as when she pleads in one scene to just be allowed to be a kid, you want to reach into it all and tell her it’ll be okay.
What’s perhaps most refreshing is the film’s lack of an overpowering message, even as it steers everything into a decidedly positive direction by its end. It doesn’t say that doing this or not doing that will result in anything, only that a struggle comes in all our lives and to persevere is what defines us. Kalani faces a number of such struggles that should derail any young person in her position, but – and you get the impression that she is representative of so many in like situations – she fights on not because the story demands it, but because it’s what she needs to do. Kalani is a remarkable role model, yes, because she is strong and independent, but more so because she is vulnerable. This greatly humanizes her, especially as she confides in the only stable person in her life, that of Mr. Rose. Glover is mostly an extended cameo, but you get no sense that he takes this lightly, the two sharing some of the most impactful moments in the movie.
While the independent film scene is not lacking for human interest stories, Strive finds a place all its own, Rippberger able to balance the uplifting themes well among the more harrowing setbacks of a young woman’s life. Led by a deeply personal performance, the takeaway in all this is less about the broader strokes of a story filled with many affecting moments but more so the smaller intimate highlights that pull us into Kalani’s tiny corner, where we all feel part of what it means to be alive. Highly recommended.