PG-13, 2h 15min – Biography, Comedy, Crime
Now Available on DVD, Blu-ray and Streaming Services
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The truth hurts.
That is what should be taken away from Spike Lee’s triumphant, poignant and entertaining “BlacKkKlansman.” It is one of the rare times where I’ve witnessed audience members emotionally and verbally reacting to the screen after the credits began to roll.
This current “Spike Lee Joint” finds Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an African-American rookie police officer from Colorado, successfully manage to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan with the help of a white surrogate (Adam Driver), who eventually becomes head of the local branch.
The film opens with a character by the name of Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard – who could be mistook for a 1960’s version of absurdist InfoWars barker Alex Jones—hosting some sort of faux white supremacy video as images of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” project across his face. This is important, as Griffith’s “masterpiece” plays heavily into the narrative of this film.
This film is based on a true story and is an adaptation of Ron Stallworth 2014 memoir of the same name, a memoir that detailed Stallworth’s infiltration of not only the local chapter of the KKK but also how he hoodwinked David Duke himself. Pretty good for a rookie cop.
John David Washington (son of Denzel Washington) plays Detective Stallworth with nuance and humor. At the same age, his father Denzel had a fire in his eyes that served him well in his early career performances; John David is a completely different actor and found the right tone and temperment for this character. I’m looking forward to watching his career.
Adam Driver (Kylo Ren in the new “Star Wars” films) delivers another solid performance as Stallworth’s partner in this crusade. Driver is not your typical “star,” but he is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors to watch. His understated style is always fascinating and the character’s journey from apathy to empathy is a pleasure to watch.
The real star here however, is director Spike Lee, whose voice shines through in this material. It had been a while since I viewed one of Lee’s films and that’s a shame. As an artist of cinema he is one of the very best. Every shot, edit, line and wink from the filmmaker comes through with abundant style and energy.
If I have any complaints it would lie in the tone of the movie. It quickly goes from straight on comedy to matters of life and death, racism, and right back to comedy. I suppose it was effective at keeping me on my toes and allowing the film to continue to move along at a brisk and entertaining pace, but I found it a bit frustrating.
I also took pause with the general characterization the film has that all Klan’s members here are either mentally off-their-rocker or stupid. I do agree that racism is rooted in a deep combination of ignorance and mental illness, but to paint them with such a broad brush underestimates the danger they pose to society. These people were evil and dangerous. I don’t want to give them more credit than they deserve, but this did raise an eyebrow. These are small nitpicks in an otherwise great film.
Before I end this review I want to go back to the influence D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” has on this motion picture. A better writer than me recently pointed out that “BlacKkKlansman” is a colossal middle finger to that film, and that is partly true. There is, however, much more going on here than just one filmmaker’s angst about the legacy of what many consider to be the birth of modern American cinema.
“The Birth of a Nation” is considered the first “blockbuster.” It was the first motion picture screened in the White House, one of the first American feature-length silent films, a technical marvel and a trailblazer in editing and production technique.
The film is also, as the late Roger Ebert so eloquently put it, “A great film that argues for evil.” The movie is widely considered to have revived the long-dead Ku Klux Klan, celebrating its “rebirth” the same year of the film’s release, and used screenings of the film as a recruitment tool not only that year but all the way into the 1970’s. It was Hollywood’s highest grossing film until “Gone With the Wind” in 1939, another film that doesn’t escape Lee’s ire here. In a lot of ways “The Birth of a Nation” is the American equivalent to Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will.” One may be “fiction” and one documentary-style, but they both manipulated the power of cinema to elevate a group of people that wished to do harm to those they felt were inferior to them.
“BlacKkKlansman” is the answer to those films, but it makes its point with humor, wit, anger and technical prowess. Above all else the film is indeed entertaining. Lee is on his game here. The juxtaposition of the local chapter of the Klan cheering on a screening of “The Birth of a Nation” and the story Harry Belafonte’s character tells a group of African American students about a friend of his that was lynched in the 1960’s is one of the most effective moments you will see in cinema this year. The two sequences are “parallel edited” (where two different storylines in two different locations happening at the same time are intercut). D.W. Griffith made this technique famous in “The Birth of a Nation,” and Lee shoves it right down his throat here.
I’ve always felt that motion pictures were just as much a national pastime as baseball. They can have a loud voice in pop-culture and cause important conversations to be had. Love it or loathe it, Hollywood has been front and center during social, racial, sexual and political changes.
Such was the conversation after the excruciating final moments of this film, a reminder that many of our worst instincts in America have returned. Pandora’s Box has been re-opened. As the final image projected onto the screen and the late, great musician Prince started his stirring rendition of “Mary Don’t You Weep” (a previously unreleased gem), I heard a woman behind me sobbing. A man on the other side of the theater vocalized his anger at racism. Another reminded the entire theater to “vote!”
The truth hurts.
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Joshua B. Porter is a Writer/Director/Producer. The most recent film he produced, “August Falls”, is currently available on Amazon Prime as well as other streaming services and DVD. He can be reached at @joshuabporter.
Originally publish for the Mountain Democrat newspaper: https://www.mtdemocrat.com/prospecting/buttered-and-salty-7/
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BlacKkKlansman clip-Ron asks Flip to go undercover
