A Spike Lee History Lesson

Rating: 9/10 (12 August 2018)

B+
THIS FILM IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
IN BRIEF: An important film about race relations, then and now.
JIM'S REVIEW: Spike Lee's scathing indictment of civil unrest, BlacKkKlansman takes place in another time, the mid-seventies, but it is far from a period drama. Directed with unabashed anger and expert filmmaking skill, this wake-up call to America relates its true story of two undercover cops who infiltrate the KKK to expose their criminal activities. But it doesn't remain lost in the seventies as it equates then to now, both in words, archival footage, and recent contemporary events that pave the way to more disgraceful behavior and moral offenses. (It is no coincidence that the film is being released on the first anniversary of the Charlottesville Virginia protest against white supremacist groups that resulted in 35 injuries and the death of Heather Heyer. That fact becomes part of this epic story too.)
The director addresses the prejudice long found in our society through the use of Hollywood early cinema. There is a bit of a disconnect with its prologue, Victor Fleming's 1939's Gone With the Wind (with its iconic shot of Confederate soldiers lay dying on the streets of Atlanta) before the film's central plot begins. As the film progresses, Mr. Lee connects the dots with past sins and present ones. He hurls his rage later on with the inclusion of D.H. Griffith's 1915 Birth of a Nation to maximum effect.
Spike Lee's screenplay, co-written by the director and David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel and Kevin Wilmott, chronicles its stranger-than-fiction tale of a black rookie police officer, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), and his personal awakening to "white hate". His on-the-job experience leads him to a meeting of two extremist groups, Black Power activists and the Knights of Ku Klux Klan. Going undercover with the former group is no problem for Ron, but he must enlist the aid of a white Jewish officer, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), to take over his identity in order to impersonate him and insinuate himself into the latter group. All this leads up to a meeting with Grand Wizard David Dukes (Topher Grace) and exposing these abhorrent hate-mongers and their terrorism.
Mr. Lee's films always are concerned with righting wrongs. Unafraid to call out racial prejudice, xenophobia, anti-semitism, and homophobia, his cinematic statements (or as he calls them "joints") deal with current issues and our continued repeating of past mistakes. Some critics call it propaganda, I call it passion and a voice to be heard. This is grandiose filmmaking, ambitious in its epic undertaking and overstuffed with multiple storylines and stark imagery. In fact, Mr. Lee does take some liberties with actual facts in the real life events of Det. Stallworth's story and his tone of the film shifts dramatically in its mood swing into occasionally dark satire to convey the irony and cruelty of the human condition. Borderline outrageous, the chain of events almost becomes a crazy quilt of America's bigotry with images and narrative absurdly colliding against each other, resembling a dated blaxploitation movie of that era. The film is manipulative and heavy-handed in some portions, but it is mostly powerful and disturbing in its content.
He cast his film with actors who are so physical right for their roles which gives an immediate authenticity to the film. Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Hauser, Corey Hawkins,, Nicholas Turturro, and Harry Belafonte are especially fine in their parts. Most effective are Mr. Grace as the KKK leader, Jasper Pääkkönen as one of his henchman and Ashlie Atkinson who plays his white supremacist wife, Connie, delivering the menace and bile extremely well. But the core of the film is the relationship between the two detectives and both Mr. Washington and Mr. Driver are excellent. They imbue a real chemistry together. Alec Baldwin brings strong support playing against type in a role that forms a fascinating paradox with his common persona.
There are major set pieces that impress with the director's free-ranging style. Very notable is his trademark crosscutting of contrasting scenes with the Klansmen and their families viewing the Griffith film in rapturous attention and chanting "white power" while in another part of the city, black students listen in awe to a lecture about the senseless murder of an innocent black man as they shout "black power". The variance between the two groups is startling. Never one to shy away from making a political statement or two, Mr. Lee uses intense documentary imagery in his film's climax to hold our president personally responsible for the hatred and polarized climate in our splintered nation.
Production values are strong throughout with special mention to Chayse Irvin's lush cinematography and Barry Alexander Brown's skillful editing. Terrence Blanchard provides the musical soundtrack with carefully selected songs of the era to comment on and advance the action.
BlackkKlansman is an important film that needs to be seen and heard. It uses historical fact-based incidents in its savage exposé of racial intolerance.
It is one of Mr. Lee's finest achievements and one of the year's best films.
And, yes, despite (or because of) the blind ignorance of the 2013 Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling stripping away key elements of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and our present-day 45th United States political leader's sanctioned bigotry, racism is still alive and doing quite well.