summer of 1989 i sat in a theater in Washington DC to watch Spike Lee's second joint, Do The Right Thing, which hit with the cultural force of a bomb following it's premiere in Cannes a few months earlier. not only did it live up to the hype as an uncompromising statement from Lee on race in America at that particular moment, it was also a masterful studio debut for any filmmaker of Lee's age. personally, for a white kid from a small rural town, it challenged my own preconceptions about relations between blacks and whites and opened my eyes to a community that was rarely if ever represented (at that point) in popular media.
nearly 30 years later, Spike's latest joint is just as socially urgent even if the storytelling itself is not quite as audacious as DTRT. the premise is a fairly conventional buddy cop story (based on true events) with the twist that the main cop here is a young black rookie attempting to infiltrate the KKK in Colorado Springs. for obvious reasons, he must enlist a white partner on the force to stand in for him when the infiltration moves off the phone. all of that is pretty standard stuff and Lee has a lot of fun with the various situations.
what elevates BlacKKKLansman to something deeper is the way Lee uses that trope-y premise to infuse the relationships with the historical experience of black Americans with white Americans, and the police in particular. the harassment and brutality aimed at radical groups in 1971, like the Black Panthers, resonates onscreen with all the weight of Black Lives Matter today and the most recently publicized shootings. sometimes Lee goes for winks and jokes that reference current events too on the nose but he's never factually wrong about the parallels either. down to the striking imagery and terrific soundtrack/score, it all clicks for a master at work.
nearly 30 years later, Spike's latest joint is just as socially urgent even if the storytelling itself is not quite as audacious as DTRT. the premise is a fairly conventional buddy cop story (based on true events) with the twist that the main cop here is a young black rookie attempting to infiltrate the KKK in Colorado Springs. for obvious reasons, he must enlist a white partner on the force to stand in for him when the infiltration moves off the phone. all of that is pretty standard stuff and Lee has a lot of fun with the various situations.
what elevates BlacKKKLansman to something deeper is the way Lee uses that trope-y premise to infuse the relationships with the historical experience of black Americans with white Americans, and the police in particular. the harassment and brutality aimed at radical groups in 1971, like the Black Panthers, resonates onscreen with all the weight of Black Lives Matter today and the most recently publicized shootings. sometimes Lee goes for winks and jokes that reference current events too on the nose but he's never factually wrong about the parallels either. down to the striking imagery and terrific soundtrack/score, it all clicks for a master at work.
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