BLACKKKLANSMAN

BLACKKKLANSMAN is a superb, searing, angry film from a very angry film-maker. The astonishing thing is that the film-maker - Spike Lee - manages to command such self-discipline despite his anger, and manages to fashion a film that is both brutal and funny. How many film-makers could straddle that line so expertly? How many could command such a knowledge of film history as to weave classic depictions of racism in a film that feels so authentically of the 1970s, and yet so seamlessly builds to Charlottesville and contemporary racial violence?   To say BLACKKKLANSMAN is a tour de force is an under-statement.  It is provocative, goofy, feel-good, feel-distraught, bloodied but unbowed.  This is cinema at its most heightened, powerful and disturbing.  

The movie opens with a provocation that may have passed some viewers by. Spike Lee spends much of this film both indicting and redeeming mainstream Hollywood films from their role in normalising racism. He opens with GONE WITH THE WIND - a film that depicts subservient slaves oh-so-happy to be taken care off by their paternalistic owners, and actually has a couple of them saye a white girl from rape.  He then has one of Hollywood's most famous black activists - the magnificent Harry Belafonte - indict THE BIRTH OF A NATION for resuscitating the popularity of the KKK. Belafonte shows how the film inspired a lynching, and was praised by then President Woodrow Wilson as "history written in lightning".  Belafonte/Lee show us explicit photographs of what happened to the victim.  Lee  then intercuts this with footage of the KKK recruits being inducted, complete with white hoods, in the 1970s of the main action of the film.  Finally, Lee takes his fictional film and directly connects its subject matter to contemporary America, showing footage of the racial violence in Charlottesville and Trump's mealy-mouthed false equivalence between the white supremacists and those opposing them. It's as if he's saying to us - remember that one president who said how the KKK looked amazing in that super popular film. Well, now I'm taking back your cinema screens and showing you another president, a hundred years later, being similarly racist, and you WILL watch and be shocked and provoked. And boy was it shocking.  Even when you see this footage on twitter videos, or on the news on TV, it's just different - visceral - seeing it on the big screen, especially after the two hours of build up that Spike gives it.

So back to the plot. The film is based on the almost absurd true story of a black cop who infiltrated the Klan back in the 1970s. He did this by ringing them up and asking for info and pretending to want to join.  He even got so far as to speak to David Duke! Of course, when he needed to actually attend those meetings and get enough evidence to arrest people he had to send in someone who was actually white - in this case an actually Jewish cop. So the Klan was doubly fooled.  John David Washington (son of Denzel) gives a quietly powerful portrait of the black cop - Ron Stallworth - and it's actually worth noting his defense of being a cop in the first place to his radical girlfriend. It's a message many in contemporary America need to hear.  There's something noble in being a cop - not all cops have to be racists. Adam Driver is similarly impressive as the Jewish cop who has never particularly felt the power of his race or religion and is forced to address his "passing" when he hears explicit anti-semitism of the first time. 

As the film progresses we see the imposter inducting into the Klan - a Klan that is planning bomb attacks against its enemies. The superficial tension comes from whether our cops will be exposed, and whether the attack will go ahead. And it works. But the real tension comes from Lee taking us right up against the most horrid racism, and keeping us there for 2 hours, and seeing if we will flinch from seeing it play out to its contemporary climax. When it comes it feels earned, brave and bold.  

BLACKKKLANSMAN played Cannes 2018 where it won the Grand Prix. It was released in cinemas this summer and is now available to rent and own. The film is rated R and has a running time of 135 minutes. 

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE, 1967-1975

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE, 1967-1975 does exactly what it says on the tin.  It edits together footage found in the archive of the Swedish equivalent of the BBC - footage filmed by Swedish journalists interviewing key figures in the black civil rights movement in the US.  It takes us through the footage chronologically, allowing those icons to speak in their own words, with the occasional voiceover from contemporary figures to provide context.  We are given unprecedented access to Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and Kathleen Cleaver.  And as modern commentators, we have the older Davis, Questlove, Erikah Badu, and others. We even see the original journalists become part of the story as the US authorities become concerned at the allegedly negative portrayal of the USA in Sweden. All of this adds up to an enriching, educational experience - the feeling that we have had a glimpse inside a movement, and rediscovered its relevance and potency.   This film is important, intelligently edited, and genuinely entertaining and insightful to watch.  I can't imagine why you wouldn't.

From a personal point of view, watching this film made me angry at the apparent intellectual poverty and political vacuity of the current Occupy movement.  Where is the charismatic articulation of a clear set of aims - the clear exposition of injustice?  Where is our Stokely Carmichael? Where is our Angela Davis?

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE played Berlin, London and many other festivals in 2011. It was released in Sweden in April; was released in the US in the autumn, and is currently on release in Greece and France. It opens in Germany on December 14th.

I don't get the appeal of CARMEN JONES

I don't understand why CARMEN JONES is worth a re-release. Sure, Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge are attractive and give decent acting performances as the free-spirited seductress who lures an upstanding soldier into a life of crime and desperate violence. But this is, in many ways, a disastrous adaptation of the Bizet opera (of which I am a moderate fan). For a start, the lead actors (the majority of whom were accomplished singers) are dubbed by singers who do not have the technical chops for singing opera. Second, Otto Preminger does not bring the best out of the source material which his staging. A classic example is early on in the piece when Carmen sings "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" or whatever the updated version of the score calls it. On stage, the aria is our first glimpse of Carmen's character and we have to believe that she is absolutely bewitching. Usually, this is staged with Carmen moving fluidly through a group of people hanging on her every word. Preminger chooses to have her sing this in a cafeteria where all involved are seated - indifferent - at tables through which Carmen moves uneasily.

Overall, then, this film left me cold. If you want to see an imaginative, though not flawless, modern version of the operetta, you should check out U-CARMEN instead.

CARMEN JONES was originally released in 1954. Otto Preminger won the Golden Bear and Dorothy Dandridge was nominated for, but did not win, the Best Actress Oscar. The film is currently on re-release in the UK.

BOBBY – a love letter to the America that no longer exists

The BOBBY of the title is Senator Robert Kennedy, the 1968 Democratic presidential candidate who was assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Before the London film fest screening, writer-director (and for a whole generation, Young Gun) Emilio Estevez declared that BOBBY was his love letter to America. He noted that in test screenings in Europe, people told him that the movie reminded them of what they used to admire in America and how much we miss that America. He declared that “he misses it too.” The America he misses is the America that Kennedy referred to: the America of compassion and civil liberty – of redistributive social policies, the rule of law, environmental concern and peace. It is the America that embraces the poor and the ethnic minorities.

The main thing to say about BOBBY is that it is not an old-style Oliver-Stone-political thriller. Estevez does not spend his time delving into the murky under-world of big business, politics, spies and conspiracies. Indeed, we are never told who shot Bobby or why. Estevez is far more ambitious than that. What he is attempting to do is express the hopes and fears of liberal America in 1968 as his camera wanders round the Ambassador Hotel and homes in on different characters.

We have a young high-school graduate (Lindsay Lohan) who is marrying her class-mate (Elijah Wood) to keep him from being posted to Vietnam. We have the widowed ex-hotel manager (Anthony Hopkins) who lingers in the lobby because he has no home to go to, playing games of chess with his best friend – an African-American (Harry Belafonte.) We have the current hotel manager (William H Macy) who is cheating on his wife (Sharon Stone) with the operator (Heather Graham). We have the drunk lounge singer (Demi Moore) who is frightened at getting old commiserating with the hair-dresser (Stone). We have a sweet rich couple (Helen Hunt and Martin Sheen) re-discovering their love for each other. And in the kitchens, Christian Slater’s racist manager is making Freddie Rodriguez work a double shift and miss his baseball game. And finally, to leaven this mix of good people struggling through, we have a couple of campaign staff dropping acid with Ashton Kutcher’s hippie. This is a judicious piece of writing – at once showing the counter-culture of 1968 but also giving us some laughs amidst the pious politics.

As you can see from that little summary this movie is stuffed full of big name stars and none of them disappoint. Sharon Stone and Demi Moore in particular give nuanced performances and their scene together is the heart of the movie. In addition to being beautifully written and acted, the period costume design is also superb. I also want to draw attention to the brilliant directorial decision not to cast an actor as Bobby Kennedy but to let archive footage and selective framing take his place. The blending of the two is seamless.

My quibbles are minor. First, on occasion the movie straddles the fine line between the emotional and schmaltzy. And while Laurence Fishburne acts all bar Stone and Moore off the screen, his wise old man routine is a little grating to my cynical English ears. My only other quibble is in Estevez’ presumption that the audience is American. Estevez betrays this presumption in the opening titles, when he speaks of the hope that Bobby Kennedy brought to “our” country. This is a little alienating for European audiences,

For all that, BOBBY remains an astutely judged directorial effort for Estevez.

BOBBY played Venice, Toronto and London 2006. It opens in the US on November 17th 2006. It opens in Belgium and France in January 2007, the Netherlands in February 2007, Spain in March and Japan in May.