footage fromThe Birth of a Nation,DW
Grith’s 1915 Civil War epic, a pioneering
piece of American cinema that is now almost
unwatchably racist.
BlacKkKlansmandoesn’t just reach back
into history. Lee recreates his 1970s setting
in all its kitsch, soulful fullness, although this
is also a fi lm of acute relevance. “America
would never elect someone
like David Duke,”
Ron opines at one
point, to bitter
laughs. It’s no
laughing matter
when, at the end of
the film, Lee shows
a 2017 speech by the
real-life Duke
praising Donald Trump
(who implicitly returns the
compliment by refusing
to condemn white
supremacist agitators).
This is then followed by
the awful footage of the
Charlottesville protests in
which anti-fascist activist
Heather Heyer was killed. The film is
dedicated to her. With many other directors
the memorial could have smacked of
opportunism. Instead, Lee’s powerful,
ferociously compelling movie, with its mix of
profound sadness and stirring anger, feels an
entirely appropriate setting for such a gesture.Edward Lawrenson @EdwardLawrensonBig problem, right? But Ron recruits his
white colleague Flip Zimmerman (an
appealingly restrained Adam Driver) to act
as Ron for that meeting, and in the subsequent
encounters with Walter and his less
PR-sensitive fellow klansmen. Thus begins
an exuberantly staged, high-stakes intrigue
involving Ron and Flip maintaining this
elaborate double identity
with the Klan. It’s a twisty,
incident-packed plot that
Lee handles adroitly, and
still finds room for Ron’s
romance with African-
American activist Patrice
(Laura Harrier). There’s also
a remarkable contribution
from KKK Grand Wizard
(and still active hatemonger)
David Duke (played
with silky menace by
Topher Grace).
WhileBlacKkKlansman
is often very funny, after a
while the comedy runs dry,
especially as the Klan plots
violence, and the tone – out
of necessity – takes an angrier and
more unsettling turn.
An account of a young man who was
murdered by a racist mob in the late 1910s,
told to a group of black student activists with
sombre authority by a character played by
Harry Belafonte, shocks those young people
into disgusted silence – as it did the cinema
audience I was with. Just as disturbing is theB
lacKkKlansmantells the improbable
but true story of an African-American
detective in early 1970s Colorado who
infiltrates the local chapter of the Ku Klux
Klan. It’s a major comeback for director Spike
Lee, but I wonder if he felt a certain reluctance
approaching the project. This is an at times
entertaining, at times profoundly ugly tale of
white racism – of its toxic history in the US
and its continuing legacy. It’s a subject that
Lee has chronicled over his long career, and
while he must surely wish things had
improved by now here he is again, returning
to the wounds of the past and the pain of the
present. And yet the film shows no sign of any
despairing fatigue: it is galvanising cinema,
made with an urgency and anger that leaps
from the screen.
We’re in the small city of Colorado Springs,
and a young man called Ron Stallworth (John
David Washington, who is terrific) becomes
the first African-American recruit to the local
police force. Appointed detective, he begins
a telephone friendship with Walter (Ryan
Eggold), the head of the local chapter of
the KKK.
Of course Walter assumes Ron is white,
an impression Ron is happy to cultivate by
speaking in a kind of nasally whine (the film
is, among many other things, a sharply drawn
portrait of the many roles black Americans
such as Ron have to adopt to get by in white
society). Scenting an opportunity to make
some arrests, Ron asks to join the Klan and
Walter, outwardly amiable, inwardly rotten,
invites him along.
FILM
FINAL REEL
Alsoout this
week isThe
King.There
can only be
one, and it’s
Elvis. In this
fascinating and ambitious
documentary director
Eugene Jarecki takes to
the road following in Elvis’s
footsteps, and the result
is not just a portrait of this
towering, still complex
iconbutalsoofPresident
Trump’s divided America.Special K
Spike Lee’s exceptional comeback tackles the theme of
racism with a nourishing mix of humour and righteous angerREAD MORE FROM...VISIT BIGISSUE.COMEDWARD LAWRENSON