A member of the Ku Klux Klan is nestled with his wife in their bed. As they spoon, a soothing love song adorns their pillow talk. They whisper sweet nothings about killing n—ers and dreaming of a better tomorrow.
This is one of several unsettling scenes in Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman.” And it’s not just because of the language. The scene isn’t staged as a laughable parody, but as the genuine sentiment of two ordinary, real Americans who have internalized their hate so much that to them, it feels normal.
“BlacKkKlansman” shines a light on how violent racism and prejudice becomes institutionalized and normalized. But Lee also gives some hope, despite a bittersweet ending and a grim coda that invokes the Charlottesville riots of last year, that positive change can be embraced as well.
He does it through a film that’s as radical as it is traditional. It’s as much a wake up call and blatant parable for 2018 as it is a subtle indictment of the world beyond Trump’s America. With any luck, “BlacKkKlansman” will rattle some cages and startle people into action. But Lee’s managed to do it with as entertaining and compelling a movie as he’s made in decades.
In Colorado Springs in the 1970s, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) joined the local police department to become one of the agency’s first black detectives, saw an ad in the newspaper, and made a call to inquire about joining the KKK. He used his own name, and he lengthened the enunciation of his words to sound convincingly white. With the help of a white, Jewish detective (Adam Driver) who posed as him during in-person meetings, Stallworth managed to infiltrate the KKK and even carry on a correspondence over the phone with David Duke (Topher Grace), then the Klan’s Grand Wizard.
It sounds too good to be true, or maybe like the premise for a Dave Chappelle routine. And yet it’s based on a true story and feels scarily plausible the deeper Stallworth gets involved. For instance, the racist pillow talk scene is not the only one that marries genuine human pathos with grotesque hatred. There’s also a viewing of “The Birth of a Nation,” as powerful and problematic film as any ever made. The KKK audience watching it cheers and applauds with vigor and rousing spirit. It’s not cartoonish the way Lee stages it, and in another context, it might be inspiring.
That “BlacKkKlansman” hits as many classical storytelling beats and has as much humor as it does is part of its power. There’s a great scene where an untrusting, gnarly good ‘ol boy named Felix (Jasper Paakkonen) gives the white Stallworth a lie detector test, suspecting he might be Jewish. “Have you been circumstanced,” he asks. He then proceeds to doubt the Holocaust ever happened until it gets thrown back in his face in a way he can understand, that if you’re an anti-Semite, doubting the Holocaust is like doubting a great moment of human history.
To call “BlacKkKlansman” subtle would perhaps be an overstatement. But Lee never breaks the illusion of the historical period piece he’s recounting. One scene that comes to mind is a white, senior officer explaining to Stallworth how someone like David Duke could rise to power. He never appears in white robes, always dresses in suits and performs a calculated PR strategy until his radical hatred appears not so bad. “Eventually, you get someone in the White House who embodies it…Why don’t you wake up?”
It’s a remarkable scene; you’d be stupid to read it as anything but about today. But compare that to Lee’s recent (and excellent) “Chi-Raq,” which literally opens with a blaring siren, larger-than-life gun homicide statistics, John Cusack giving a sermon about Chicago violence, and Samuel L. Jackson serving as the narrator to a reimagined Greek tragedy. Lee’s still not subtle, but he’s gotten smarter and more restrained in how to convey such an urgent message.
The film’s other characters capture the pulse of the country in quieter ways as well. Driver’s character has a heartrending moment when he starts to ponder his identity and finds he can’t separate politics from it in the way he once did. “I never thought much about it,” he says regarding his Jewish heritage. “Now I think about it all the time.”
Like Driver’s character, people have been inundated with thinking about and dreading politics 24/7. It’s unavoidable in this waking nightmare we’re living in. So it’s understandable why you might initially resist a movie like “BlacKkKlansman” designed to make you think about race even more. But amazingly, Lee’s film is escapist entertainment. It’s fun, suspenseful and enjoyable enough that no matter how dire and scary the situation may seem right now, maybe it’s not so hard to imagine a tidy solution.
4 stars
guess i’m out in left field on this one, but let’s take a crack at it:
technically the film is sloppy in ways that do it no credit * like matching shots: they don’t … in one scene the stallworth character appears stooped over, then erect, then stooped over, then erect again (all in between edits from a second camera position—like, nobody’s gonna notice, right?) * what’s obvious, to me anyway, is that the stooped over/erect shots come from separate takes—but nobody’s bothered to camouflage this fact * yet this is the kind of stuff a “serious” filmmaker HAS to take care of: your carelessness reflects your overall attitude * and it’s not just here—a long tete-a-tete along a wooden walkway’s intercut (arbitrarily, i’d argue) with publicity posters from black exploitation films of the 70s * well yes, it’s nice to be reminded, but—… that long walk, THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON! * and what the intercutting of posters does is conveniently camouflage this * of course the pretense is objectionable in a film that aspires to be taken seriously, as a densely argued artifact * but this is all just FILLER …
also: that “ordinary, real american” couple sharing racial vilifications in bed—NOT a parody?? * the wife’s been rendered grossly obese, an oblivious, nattering harridan; the husband, the one who administers lie detector tests and adverts to jews being “circumstanced,” seems little more than a glazed-eyed fanatic (the camera never misses a chance to accentuate his scarcely contained ferocity, always those reflections off the irises …) * in short, both of these people are demonic cartoons—gratifying, at least if you’re in the chorus being preached to (which i am, but that’s STILL part of the problem)—which goes for some of those other yokels too * yet arguably if you want to reach people who don’t already think the way you do, then this isn’t how you do it * who’s gonna “learn”?: the implied target audience won’t go near the theater!
finally, a special gripe: those cheering kluxers watching griffith’s BIRTH OF A NATION—the amount of actual night riding and klan footage in the film isn’t all that great * so these people are gonna sit through, let’s say, the initial 40 minutes for the sake of the next 10 without falling asleep? * (speaking from experience in this: i once was involved in a screening of BIRTH, by a chicago nonprofit, that was actively picketed by an antiracial group; our fearless leader even encouraged the picketers, cynically, to draw attention to the showing * as i recall the eventual audience numbered less than ten … i can guarantee you there was no cheering among them—from anyone!) * i mean, i doubt there’re a lot of silent film fans in that colorado bunch—and basically to watch the film profitably you have to be interested in movie history, auteurism, lots of other “cinematic” arcana that these kluxer fanatics would’ve had little exposure to * in other words: you want an action movie you can whoop and holler at?—forget it guys, this won’t do it for ya!