BlacKkKlansman

Before Black Lives Matter and I Can’t Breathe became famous on the Internet, Spike Lee was directing movies about social justice issues and savaging common racism. “BlacKkKlansman” is his 2018 latest, and it is one of his best.

Several things are outstanding about this film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at 2018’s Cannes Film Festival and stars Denzel Washington’s son, John David Washington in the emotional true story of an African-American undercover cop who became a caretaking member of the Ku Klux Klan in 1978.

Kenneth Turan said in his review, “Perhaps most impressive is that the director, who’s made more than 20 features and documentaries since his debut feature, 1986’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” is not only still on fire but has found a story that allows him to be as excited and involved as he was when it all began.”

Turan continued, “And all that experience allows Lee to be as skilled a filmmaker as he is a committed polemicist, an artist as well as a provocateur who doesn’t want us to get too comfortable even as we are entertained.”

Here’s a fact: Lee, his writing partner Kevin Willmott and earlier writers Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz have found a way to make this true story painfully related to what is going on currently.

“The biggest thing we wanted,” Lee said in an interview at Cannes, “was to put stuff in the script, very strategically, so it would not be a period piece.”

Lee and team have gifted this, and they have done it exactly his way. Working with longtime editor Barry Alexander Brown, the director heedlessly but fearlessly creates these issues, weighing tense satiric comedy, impenitent social commentary, believable danger, and even pleasing romance.

Turan said, “Also in the mix are random shots of classic blaxploitation movie posters and a gorgeous black-is-beautiful montage shot in 35-millimeter by cinematographer Chayse Irvin.” As Lee said Film Comment magazine, “It’s a Spike Lee joint. It’s not just one thing.”

At the center of it all, really, is that strange true story. Despite the film’s elements of violent danger and romance are not there in Stallworth’s autobiographical book (Black Klansman: Race, Hate and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime), the main story of a black man penetrating the KKK is as messing as it sounds.

However, before the film gets to that it creates the moment with two short elements: the famous “Gone With the Wind” crane shot of damaged Southern soldiers ending with a shot of the Confederate flag, and Alec Baldwin playing a huge bigoted Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard filming a racist PSA talking about mongrel countries and “our holy white Protestant values.”

It’s probably best where I say that “BlacKkKlansman’s” language is really bad and racist as you would think, possibly much worse than you think. Having the worst of it said on the phone to Klan members by a black undercover cop emphasizes the theme that racism is the meaning of strange and ridiculous as it is hateful.

When we meet Ron Stallworth, carefully adapting his great Afro before going in the Colorado Springs, Colorado police station, the Klan is the last thing he thinks of.

However, as played by Washington, who first acted for Lee as a child with his father Denzel in “Malcolm X,” Stallworth is thinking of doing the right thing by being the first black cop on the Colorado Springs force. Stallworth is hired, but he is given rookie tasks like the records room, where he has to repress anger at white coworkers who call the people of color “toads.”

Turan said, “Then fate intervenes and Stallworth gets a special assignment monitoring a local speech given by firebrand Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), the former Stokely Carmichael.”

That’s when he encounters Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), the cop who will become his undercover partner, and Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), the honorable woman he falls in love with.

That speech, based on things Ture actually said, is one of the script’s main then/now parallels. Hearing Ture say “we are being shot down in the streets like dogs by white racist cops” sounds chillingly current.

Bored by his job, Stallworth sees an advertising for the Klan in a newspaper and at a spur of the moment calls the number (in real life, he wrote a note). He’s surprised when the Klan leader Walter Breachway, played by Ryan Eggold, answers the phone.

As he tells his boss, because he can speak the king’s English when he can, and because racist rants are easy for him, Stallworth really surprises the Klan boss that a face-to-face meeting before the membership is given.

Realistically, Stallworth can’t go himself, so the Jewish Zimmerman is said to pretend he is Stallworth and go in his place, which has fights with Breachway’s jerk colleague Felix, played by Finish actor Jasper Paakkonen, a strong racist who guesses Flip’s traditions and is not happy about it.

Turan said, “As for Stallworth, his phone prowess leads him to a long-distance friendship with David Duke (Topher Grace), the Grand Wizard of the Klan himself, which in turn leads to all kinds of complications when Duke makes a visit to Colorado Springs.”

While “BlacKkKlansman’s” script often connects today with the past, nothing prepares us for the power of the film’s last act, which uses news video to talk about the danger and death that occurred in Charlottesville, VA, almost exactly a year before the film was released.

Turan noted, “Especially shocking in the context of what we’ve seen is video of the death of Heather Heyer, killed when a car rammed into counter-protesters at a “Unite the Right” rally, and the presence of the real David Duke talking insistently about “taking America back.”” Lee tells us that this fight is not over by a long shot.

Turan said, “In fact, the last thing viewers of “BlacKkKlansman” see, as audiences of Lee’s films have always seen, is the motto of his 40 Acres and a Mule production company: By Any Means Necessary.” Despite being familiar, that saying has never felt so related, exactly to the point.

If you missed the chance to see this film in the theaters, see it now on Blu-Ray or Netflix or RedBox as a rental. This is a really powerful movie and it has some funny moments. You will really feel the weight of this film that is really relevant in today’s society. I give this a real recommendation.

Well everyone, thank you for joining in for this year’s “Black History Movie Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed this year’s review. There will be more next year. Until we get there again, stay tuned next month to see what I have in store for everyone.