André Holland and Andra Day in Exhibiting Forgiveness.A man with frazzled hair and beard gets mixed up in a liquor store robbery and is badly hurt. He stumbles to his brother’s house, where his wounds are tended to, his hair and beard trimmed; in the shower, he cries until he’s shaking, the water at his feet stained with dirt and dried blood. Somewhere else, in a clean, opulent modern house, a talented painter appears to be on the brink of art stardom. His works are already fetching big money in the art market, and his next set of paintings looks to be an even bigger hit. But the painter is deeply uncomfortable with his success, maybe scared, maybe even angry. How are the two men connected? Exhibiting Forgiveness — written and directed by celebrated artist and NXTHVN founder and president Titus Kaphar, making his debut as a filmmaker — explores that connection, and in the process, lays bare the ways that love, pain, art, and family history can twist together in potent ways.Exhibiting Forgiveness — running in theaters now (including Cinemark in North Haven) — tells the story of Tarrell Rodin (André Holland), an artist who makes enormous paintings that portray scenes of life in a neighborhood that evoke simultaneous senses of love and dread. When we meet him, his talent and obvious work ethic have already led to a great deal of success. He lives in a tastefully opulent house with his wife Aisha (Andra Day) and son Jermaine (Daniel Michael Barriere), both of whom he is devoted to. He’s on the brink of having his mother Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) move in with them — or so he thinks. When he returns to the neighborhood where he grew up to come get her, he discovers she hasn’t packed at all. He and his family are obliged to stay and help her. What Tarrell is truly unprepared for, however, is the return of his father La’Ron (John Earl Jelks) to the picture, a man Tarrell hasn’t seen in 15 years and is clearly estranged from. La’Ron desperately wants to reconnect with his son. He swears he’s a changed man, that he can make amends for the hurt he has caused. But can he? And is Tarrell ready to let him?Much of the momentum of Exhibiting Forgiveness isn’t provided by linear forward movement, but a process of discovery, as we the audience learn, layer by layer, what La’Ron was like when Tarrell was a child, and how he treated Joyce and Terrell. In a few harrowing scenes of La’Ron and young Tarrell (Ian Foreman), we learn the sources of Tarrell’s anger toward his father, and also his drive to succeed. In the present day, we also see how Tarrell’s emotional turmoil is fueling the creation of perhaps the best art of his career to date.It’s a heady mixture of elements, and one that is thoroughly anchored by exquisite performances from both Tarrells. André Holland, who has much of the film on his shoulders, is pitch perfect as a man buffeted by strong emotions (and intense nightmares) who is all too practiced at throwing those feelings into his work and tamping them down in the service of providing for his family. Ian Foreman’s marvelously raw, unfiltered performance as young Tarrell shows us the depth of the wounds that the adult Tarrell carries. Holland’s and Foreman’s work is mirrored by Jelks, who singlehandedly must show us the younger and older La’Ron, a deeply flawed man dealing with family responsibilities, substance abuse, and his own generational trauma. Jelks makes La’Ron both disturbing and relatable as he teases out the nuances of his complex character.Joyce, as it turns out, is just as complicated, and like Jelks, Ellis-Taylor puts her character through her paces, as her initially warm and boisterous entrance gives way to layers of pain, both emotional and physical. Scenes that portray her as younger also give Ellis-Taylor a chance to show her character’s strength, which she carries through to the present, despite the way the odds of her life are stacked against her. Andra Day, meanwhile, gives a well-tuned Aisha as a talented artist with ambitions of her own, navigating the tricky terrain of knowing when to support her husband and when to protect her son against him.Exhibiting Forgiveness is laudable for its unwillingness to give easy answers to the complicated questions it raises. Too often, for instance, in media and in broader society, the problems of Black families trying to escape poverty are couched by one side as a case of a system loaded against them and by the other as a case of personal responsibility, as if those elements are somehow opposed poles. Tarrell’s story reminds us that those things can whirl together in a blender of difficulty. What happens when the drive that leads a man to punish a child far too severely is the same drive that helps the son blaze a path to success? Without giving too much away, the dive into complexity also leaves the characters in realistically ambiguous places at the film’s end. A turn has been made, drama unfolded, but the future isn’t certain for anyone.The questions Exhibiting Forgiveness ask reach a razor sharpness toward the end of the film, when we see Tarrell at the opening for his latest art show, which is clearly going well — financially, at least. In a series of deft moments, as Tarrell confronts both his adoring patrons and his father, the scene becomes excoriating and uncomfortable in the best sense. How is a Black artist supposed to feel about extremely wealthy White people essentially celebrating his pain? What does it mean for his choice, his impulse, to traffic in it? Does he need the pain to make the art? What kind of art can he make if he lets go of the pain — and would his White patrons still be interested in it? The questions buzz in the air as Tarrell continues to create, even as he cuts into the canvas with a knife to do it. The future may not be certain, but there is no choice but to move into it, no matter how much of the past we’re still carrying.