Lee’s tonally uneven picture diminishes impact of relevant, astonishing true story
Released just two days before the one year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville, VA white nationalist rally and this Sunday’s “Unite the Right” white nationalist DC march, and coming on the heels of the recent Proud Boys/Patriot Prayer “Western chauvinist” gatherings in Portland and Berkeley, director Spike Lee’s polemical new film BlacKkKlansman is both relevant and disheartening in the way it reveals how little has changed in the 40+ years since the based-on-a-true story takes place. That the film’s message remains topical and necessary is indisputable; that it’s executed so poorly, then, is a disappointment.
Lee, along with screenwriters Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, and Kevin Wilmott (who also wrote Lee’s 2015 Chi-Raq), adapts Ron Stallworth’s 2014 memoir Black Klansman here, and the film’s tonal problems may in part be due to the sheer number of different voices working on the script. The story itself, though, is inherently interesting. In the late ‘70s (changed to the early ‘70s in the film, possibly because the Nixon/Vietnam background provides more narrative tension), Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, Denzel’s son) becomes the first African-American police officer and detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department. After noticing a small newspaper ad, he takes it upon himself to investigate the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, infiltrating them by calling them up, using his real name (a rookie mistake he later regrets), and then enlisting white officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to be his in-person stand in at Klan meetings. That the ruse works well enough to procure inside intel into the Klan’s doings — and even to fool Klan national director David Duke (Topher Grace, doing his best with a difficult role) — is nothing short of remarkable, and of course is a tale worth being told.
But the telling itself is the problem with Lee’s cinematic version. Lee vacillates between jokey humor, stylized nods to blackxploitation films, and serious social commentary (in the vein of his earlier, better Malcolm X), and the hodgepodge never coalesces. What works well is the nitty gritty of Stallworth’s infiltration plan; some of film’s best scenes are the ones in which we simply listen to Stallworth on the phone, talking to various Klan members (the conversations with Duke are especially great). Washington nails these scenes, using a deadpan delivery that simultaneously masks his contempt while emphasizing his disdain. Lee’s most brilliant shot shows the other officers in the squad room, slowly turning to watch and listen to Stallworth when they overhear him calmly proclaiming his support for white supremacy, without knowing what he’s up to. And a small side note: Washington doesn’t bear much resemblance to his famous father, but if you close your eyes and listen to him in some of these scenes, his vocal rhythms and cadence sound uncannily like his Dad’s; this is a role Lee would have cast the senior Washington in had it been made years ago.
Other scenes, involving Zimmerman’s interaction with the Klan members, succeed because of their danger and tension; Zimmerman is Jewish, and when a particularly skeptical Klan member wants Zimmerman to take a lie detector test, Driver’s reaction mirrors the audience’s. These are volatile, angry, and unpredictable men, and we know they won’t take kindly to being duped.
But many of Lee’s scenes are heavy handed, tedious, and lengthy (the picture could be cut almost in half; Lee’s editors seem to have failed him here). A scene in which Stokely Carmichael (also known as Kwame Ture) gives a rallying Black Power speech to a group of Black Student Union members goes on way too long, with too many lingering close ups of various audience member reactions, which are contrasted with a rowdy Klan screening of the infamous racist film Birth of a Nation. The point is made quickly and obviously, but, by extending it, the audience begins to lose patience. Such a protracted scene would work in a documentary, but, in a narrative feature with an edgy satirical bent, it feels out of place. Similarly, the audience doesn’t know what to make of an exaggerated, almost surrealistic slow-mo shot near the end of the movie, in which Stallworth and his girlfriend Patrice (Laura Harrier) draw their guns after hearing a knock, especially when it then immediately segues into actual raw, brutal footage from Charlottesville. The tonal disconnect is jarring, as it’s at odds with what precedes it, and so unfortunately lessens the impact of the horrific Charlottesville images.
The picture may have been more effective if Lee had constructed a straightforward account of Stallworth’s unquestionably fascinating and daring story (similar to what Kathryn Bigelow did in the hard-to-watch but underrated Detroit). Instead, by mixing jocularity and gravity, the film’s message regrettably gets diluted. Since Lee’s primary audience is bound to be those already on board with him, though, they may be forgiving of the picture’s flaws. An unfortunate truth is that those who most need to see the film — and who are the targets of its critique — will probably never see it.
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BlacKkKlansman opens today at Bay Area theaters.
