Checked Spike Lee’s new film (joint) BlacKkKlansman (I think that’s how its spelled and capitalized). This is his best movie in quite some time and, even though it has some jarring tonal shifts, it’s still more restrained that the lunacy that was Chi-Raq, for example. It’s also based on a true story so maybe there’s only so lunatic he could go.
BlacKkKlansman is the story of the first black police officer in Colorado Springs and how he makes himself useful in undercover investigations. First against Black Panther / Black Power radicals and then against… well, against the literal Klan. Since he can’t so easily go undercover against the Klan as a black man, he plays the white version of himself on the phone and sends in another (white) officer to pretend to be him when meeting the Klan face-to-face. It’s a crazy enough story that I doubted its authenticity… but apparently its true.
It’s an improbable story so Spike Lee plays it partly for laughs and partly serious). Part of the movie feels a bit like a buddy-cop undercover cop movie and the other part an angry polemic against racism in the US in the early 70s. And today… because don’t think Spike isn’t on a soapbox on this one. Normally if a movie has a Message, I say that you can still enjoy it because its not in your face. Well, no… Spike is in your face and he wants you to know his movie has a point of view and its angry. But its also genuinely funny at times too… I mean, they are catfishing David Duke on the phone, and Duke is played by Topher Grace.
I say that if the angry, blunt tone, blatant uses of the N word and overt racism in general makes you uncomfortable, then see this movie. Maybe it’s ok to be uncomfortable when the movie is this entertaining. In between bouts of discomfort, it’s certainly a film that wants to entertain. Maybe its ok to be preached to by a master who is in control of his anger. It’s also nice to know that not everyone gets off easy… Spike is working on multiple layers. I don’t think it’s coincidence that he’s editing shots between the Klan yelling White Power and the Panthers yelling Black Power.
One randomly cool thing about the flick is that it reminds you that Spike Lee knows his movie history. The film opens with that classic shot of a field of dead and injured Rebs in Gone with the Wind. It expertly equates a rise in lynching that occurred a year after the release of the classic silent film The Birth of a Nation and shows quite a bit of the film. But, as if to acknowledge he’s making a black cop film, Lee also goes through a mini-history of blacksploitation films like Superfly, Shaft, Cleopatra Jones, etc.
And just because Spike likes to poke a hornet’s nest while its on the ground, the film ends with a pointed reminder of Charlottesville and the Unite the Right march from 2017. Showing clips of the violence, of Trump’s equivocation, and the full footage of the car ramming into the protesters. It ends with a dedication to Heather Heyer who was killed in that attack. Spike is not being subtle here and, to a degree, his sobering anger doesn’t mesh with the more jovial tone of the rest of the film… but I think that’s purely intentional. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… Spike Lee is angry.
I enjoyed this film. It has the ability to make you uncomfortable, angry, amused, suspenseful, and thrilled all in one film. Since the movie hangs together as a united piece of film-making (and doesn’t feel disjointed), the disparate tones work. I think it’s an important movie that should be seen by anyone, including those who disagree with Spike Lee’s politics. Because we’re all Americans and as long as we’re not dedicated racists, there’s something worth seeing in this film. And the racists should see it too but I doubt they’d get anything out of it.
Score: 84