BlacKkKlansman gut punches you in the funny bone again and again. Spike Lee’s political sensibilities and Jordan Peele’s comic timing slide into one another seamlessly, marking a high water point for an accomplished director and hot writer looking for his second act. The film’s period setting feels like the distorted twin of our present: police brutality, closet racists making it to the big times, and the agony of WEB Dubois’s “double consciousness,” the loyalties, fears, and regrets of being black and being American.
BlacKkKlansman navigates fraught issues of racial violence, police reform, and our obligations to address racial and economic inequalities while seldom providing answers. The film avoids simplistic solutions, seems comfortable resting in ambiguity while not confusing uncertainty with false equivalence. When the brilliant John David Washington (this film rests on his shoulders) brings his sergeant the report from their first run-in with “the Organization,” his superior’s questions about the capabilities of the KKK echo an earlier inquiry into the Black Panthers. Ron Stallworth’s partner played by Adam Driver seems able to see the difference between these two groups in terms of the KKK’s readiness without discounting Ron’s concerns. The report between Ron and the detectives in the undercover unit is effortless, gives one of many lens for thinking about relationships that are based on a set of common ideals. Their disagreements are not symptomatic of racial animus as is the case with various bad cops in the department or the Klan in town, rather they are feeling each other’s motives out, weighing their values and their commitments to the brotherhood of justice.
Lee and Peele’s many send ups to the ghosts and phantoms of movies past give BlacKkKlansman a sense of cinematic memory. The movie opens with a long shot from a period civil war movie, a field of exclusively white bodies as the camera pans further and further out revealing a vast panorama of dead and dying soldiers. Ron and his romantic interest, the badass, effortlessly, and uncompromisingly woke president of the Black Student Association at Colorado State, (played by Laura Harrier, rising star in Hollywood, who’s been having an amazing year) discuss 70s black cinema, action films with iconic detectives and pimps. Laura’s critique of the negative stereotypes some of these films perpetuate lets BlacKkKlansman differentiate itself from the values and aesthetics of a different time, but always in a gentle, thoughtful manner. Lee and Peele are seldom righteous about their politics, acknowledging the blind spots of even the most sympathetic of characters.
The racist epithets of the film are florid, inventive, and an excellent lesson in the ability of films with cross-cultural appeal like this to exercise their muscles in benevolent violation. The racist language at once startles the audience, while also providing a comic release during tense moments. Peele and Lee give us a way to laugh at rather than with the abominable and mundane racism of America in the 1970s, which is notable in and of itself. Adam Driver’s monologue about passing is understated and brilliant. Topher Grace’s prayer at initiation and the visuals of Alec Baldwin and his flawless comic delivery are wonderfully awful distillations of the complex and Protean ideology of white supremacy.
BlacKkKlansman‘s split storytelling between the investigation of the Klan and the not-quite-love story makes for some powerful, contrasting visuals, and compelling mirror scenes. It also ratchets up the tension of one of the most masterful climactic scenes of the year by collapsing time in two side-by-side storylines. The film’s use of music, especially in the scene at the Red Lantern with the men and women singing and dancing was a really cool, fresh slice of life for people of color in the 70s, and a clever use of diegetic sound.
The ending is another thing of genius, contrasting the optimism of an instance of police reform with footage of Charlottesville this time last year. The film’s constant dialogue with the present shows competing visions of America. Ron Stallworth’s optimism about the unpopularity of mainstream racist beliefs needles at our own creeping apathy brought on by shifting baseline syndrome. A year after the protests in Charlottesville, this film feels timely and thoughtful. BlacKkKlansman is not a love story, not quite a caper, not an unalloyed triumph or a battlesong. It’s something more subtle and insidious, a satire with a long, long memory of our humanity, the sound of heroism and failure echoing and re-echoing against the present.
(UPDATE 8/21: Boots Riley, director of Sorry to Bother You, dropping some knowledge about the historical evidence for the events of this movie. He does NOT like this film and the fantasy it projects. Woke AF film critique worth digging into.)
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