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| John David Washington as a most unlikely KKKlansman |
A full useful grab bag of cinema is at Spike Lee’s beck and call after decades of occasionally marvelous films (“Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X,” “4 Little Girls”) – and he unloads that expertise in righteous anger, righteous finesse and righteous overreach in an Oscar nominated best film (with Spike nominated as best director). It’s titled, alphabet tongue-in-cheek, “Blackkklansman.”
It begins brilliantly with a long tracking shot from “Gone With the Wind” and an extensive Alec Baldwin imitation, quite frighteningly funny of a racist spokesman from maybe the McCarthy era. Then we get Spike’s take on a real 1979 story, a slightly unbelievable tale of a black police officer who joins the KKK over the phone while a fellow officer, white, continues the masquerade in person. Tensions and guessing games ensue.
The director has running cinematic threads throughout, including whether the screen splits horizontal or diagonal during conversations; how in the real Black Panther era every black person sported the same Afro; and how the faces become zombie-like threatening when the film sweeps into the black exploitation “wave your gun SuperFly” style.
Running jokes, too. How both the police bosses and the KKK can’t believe the black officer, played with a smidge of Richard Pryor impishness by John David Washington, speaks perfect King’s English. How the white officer who imitates him with the Klan, Adam Driver (nominated for a supporting actor Oscar), is actually Jewish. How a noted group of actors grimace and holler as a bumbling white supremacist cell. Among them are Jasper Paakkonen and Ashlie Atkinson as the Jack Sprat comedic opposites (he thin, she not) eager to dynamite blacks while cuddling.
There is a winning cameo from Harry Belafonte as an old man recalling the horrors of watching the Klan kill blacks in his youth. The film’s structure is a mocking internal reminder that subterfuge is not just a plotting device but reflects the entire double-dealing of America’s race relations. Walking the line in the racial divide is another of Lee’s many subtexts.
Along with the plot twists, there is a lot of ribaldry. It becomes hard by the end to know whether Spike Lee is trying to get us involved or has tongue firmly in cheek as he wraps up the story in neat Hollywood bows -- cop falls for the revolutionary black chick, officers race to break up a bomb threat, David Duke (played like a young Bill Macy by Topher Grace) as the ultimate stooge in the plotting. It’s so over the top we get the messages clearly.
After some police jesting over how they made the Klan look dumb, and some billing and cooing by the lead couple, the film turns deadly serious at the end. It links the KKK to Trump and the Charlottesville marches, a reminder that the story may mock and defeat the Klan but white supremacy rolls on in America’s highest echelons.
The film’s enjoyable showing off of Lee’s filmic mastery and social conscience winds up too elfin for its own good. It’s a reminder in a way Lee may not have intended -- that a film can throw off so much heat that it gets in the way of the sunlight.
Other current film reviews:
Mary Poppins Returns
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Roma
Vice
The Favourite
The Wife and Oscar’s best actress race
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