Is The New Spike Lee Joint 'BlacKkKlansman' A Return To Form For The Director? Here's What The Reviews Say
Based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer who successfully infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, Spike Lee's latest stars John David Washington and Adam Driver and was produced by Jordan Peele. Lauded at its Cannes premiere, "BlacKkKlansman" is coming to theaters on August 10, nearly a year to the day after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last year — as you can already guess, Spike Lee has some things to say in 2018. Here's what the reviews have to say:
Two '70s Cops Launch An Undercover Investigation Of The Klan, Collaborating On The Same False Identity
Ron Stallworth (Washington) is the first African-American hired by the Colorado Springs Police Department. After a small undercover success, he impulsively calls the local Ku Klux Klan and announces he hates all non-white people and wants to join. When he's invited to meet them in person, he persuades fellow officer Flip Zimmerman (Driver) to play his white counterpart.
[Empire]
Before his Klan investigation, Ron's first assignment is to go undercover at a Stokely Carmichael speech. ("They say he's a damn good speaker, so we don't want this Carmichael getting into the minds of the good Negroes of Colorado Springs," his fellow officers tell him.) There, he meets and falls for local college activist leader Patrice (Laura Harrier)[…] In some ways, the investigation of the Klan feels like Ron's attempts to solve this tension between his dedication to police work and his growing activism. Ron wants to reconcile his two tribes by going after a common adversary.
As The Real Stallworth, John David Washington Shifts His Performance To Each Setting's Demands
Ron is a fascinating character; his adeptness at code-switching is a part of his identity, and the reason he's uniquely qualified for the job. It also brings him no small amount of angst, especially in his relationship with Patrice. There's a lonely quality to Washington's performance, the feeling of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
[Vulture]
Patrice is a cartoon activist, and Stallworth is a cartoon policeman; they don't inform each other so much as bounce off each other in flirtatious rhythm. The lovebirds talk about their respective outlooks on black culture, white power, policing, and civil rights. They eat romantic dinners and take long walks together, exploring their fundamental contrast. But they never get to the bottom of Stallworth's high regard for policing despite everything he's learned about its violent, racialized indignities.
Adam Driver Gives Depth To Flip As He Struggles With His Own Identity While Embedded With The Klan
While Washington is very, very good here, I was more fascinated by Driver's character. I think it's partially because I have firsthand knowledge of what Ron Stallworth went through as the sole Black person at his job. The open hostility, the jokes by his White counterparts, the assumption that your skin color determines your intelligence level — I've been there, done that and am still doing it. What drew me to Flip Zimmerman was the notion of him having to "pass" in an environment that also automatically made assumptions about his skin color. But his passing isn't visual, it's mental.
Adam Driver is spectacular here; in many ways, his transformation while working with Ron is just as compelling as Ron's in its subtlety. Flip admits he never had to think much about his identity because he wasn't raised culturally Jewish and never had to identify with it one way or the other.
[Vulture]
Topher Grace Gives A Banally Evil Turn As David Duke
The KKK is planning a major show of force, and while Flip is in good with most of them, including Klan leader David Duke (Topher Grace, showing how blasé white supremacy can be), he's in very real danger and so is Ron.
Topher Grace plays David Duke, the Grand Wizard turned national director of the organization, as a public-office-seeking wonk who makes his segregationist political outlook sound like congressional budget reform[…] There's a prevailing sense that Duke's ideas don't matter in any particular sense; he exists only to extract and refine the indecent passion of countless bigots to launch his own egocentric political stardom.
The '70s Story Has Plenty Of Winks & Nods To Today…
At some point, David Duke says verbatim: "for America to achieve its…greatness again." Whether it's the actor's choice to deliver these lines a certain way or Lee's direction for that delivery, these are moments where you practically expect them to break the fourth wall and stare directly at the camera, Jim-from-"The Office" style.
[/Film]
That's one of the subtler references, and while most movies about the past botch this sort of call and response with the present, Lee generally achieves this with panache; he's rarely self-important about it. He knows he's making points that are obvious to many in his audience, and he embraces it with a combination of exuberance and despair.
… But Lee Goes On To Directly Address Today's America
The Trump connection is drawn again early on as Alec Baldwin plays a virulently racist white supremacist who constantly flubs his newsreel voiceovers while babbling about mongrels and Jews on the Supreme Court. In-between we also get scenes from D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Lee understands the power of cinema and the impact this footage has. If heavy-handed they are also incredibly effective in charting the course of racism across decades.
"BlacKkKlansman" has all the subtlety of a mallet to the face, but Lee's argument begins and ends with the fact that this is an unsubtle moment in America. Why else would he conclude his movie (otherwise a period piece) with footage of the Charlottesville rally, the fighting that broke out, the intentional car crash that killed the counter-protestor Heather Heyer, and Donald Trump's refusal to condemn the white nationalists afterward?
Like Lee's Best Films, 'BlacKkKlansman' Is Unafraid To Let Its Style And Politics Build Feverishly Upon Each Other
If "BlacKkKlansman" is not above turning its characters into mouthpieces for its ideas, it wards off excessive didacticism by giving those ideas a heady flow and a sustained pulse. There's real, expressive joy in its anger.
"BlacKkKlansman" is a nuanced story of race in America, but Lee doesn't take any chances with vagueness or ellipses, nor should he.
[Vulture]
Lee is the rare director who can maintain the integrity and beauty of a film overstuffed with ideas. He prefers vigor over rigor; he's an artist of chaos and energy, of blurred character lines and narrative curlicues. That's not just because of the boundless vitality of his style, but because he understands that, on some level, all these seemingly disparate elements are connected.
TL;DR
If "Chi-Raq" (2015) reawakened Lee's energy and imagination as a satirist, a vital voice on the realities of racialized violence in American society, then his furious, beautifully controlled "BlacKkKlansman" brings him roaring fully back to life. It may not be as conceptually audacious as that earlier picture, but its fusion of incendiary vigor and pulpy, pop-savvy entertainment is something to behold.
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