RACE HATRED BASED ON IRRATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Posted January 27th, 2019 at 9:49 amNo Comments Yet
IN REVIEW
LEE DIRECTS ANOTHER CULTURALLY IMPORTANT DRAMA ABOUT AMERICA
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
BlacKkKlansman (2018) is a dramatization of an undercover Colorado Springs Police operation during the post MLK assassination years.
Director Spike Lee shows how the diversification of the Colorado Police force led to the uncovering of a plan by white supremacists to kill a black female student union activist.
Lee uses a script with the raw racist language prevalent at the time, based on the memoir of the police department’s first black officer, Ron Stallworth, played by John David Washington.
Washington’s character is behind the infiltration of a Colorado chapter of the Ku Klux Klan at the same time the militant Black Panther movement is attempting to radicalize the student body at the University of Colorado.
Laura Harrier plays the student union president, Patricia Dumas.
Lee has become one of the great film directors of a generation by blending dramatizations of historical material with threads of documentary techniques and popular culture references.
Lee grew up in Brooklyn, New York and subsequently built his film career on exploring topics of racism and poverty facing black Americans in urban settings.
A series of films beginning with She’s Gotta Have It (1987) explored issues within black urban cultures. She’s Gotta Have It was successful in the box office, earning $7 million at the time.
Lee used the profits from this first feature length film to form his own production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks.
Lee directs independent film projects, documentaries and major feature films for studios, as well as music videos, such as Tracy Chapman: Born to Fight (Crossroads 1990) and television commercials.
Spike Lee films are often highlighted by trademark film techniques, including Lee casting himself as a supporting character, with 19 acting credits, and using strong female characters.
Lee also often pauses the film’s narrative with introspective scenes created with multi-media techniques.
BlacKkKlansman has a little bit of the trademarks except for Lee taking an acting role.
Lee once again explores group dynamics and the power of the many to influence the individual while underscoring the importance of the individual to maintain a certain amount of independence from the group.
Adam Driver co-stars in a supporting role as a white Jewish undercover police officer.
Driver has been more and more a major Hollywood actor with credits in films directed by such filmmakers as Lee, Steven Spielberg (Lincoln 2012) and Martin Scorsese (Silence 2016), when he is not playing the dark villain, Kylo Ren, in the Stars Wars reboot.
Lee shows his experience with biopic material by avoiding time fraud and the use of titles on time jumping scenes.
Lee does use an original score in several scenes but he relies on popular music for most of the movie as the backdrop to the script.
The dark serious subject matter of the film suffers from the use of humour and the somewhat unbelievable, however true, story-line of the undercover police operations.
Although the overall message of the film is the ever present possibility of race violence and the re-emergence of white supremacists in America’s power structure, the subject matter is not delivered with the suspense and seriousness that the topic deserves.
BlacKkKlansman received the Grand Prix at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. The film has been nominated for six Oscars, including one for best film, one for Lee for directing, and one for Driver in a supporting role.
BlacKkKlansman can be rented on iTunes.