![]() To some, his repetition can feel heavy-handed. Lee has used the refrain “Wake up” in many of his films it’s the first line in Do the Right Thing and the last line in School Daze. But when he gets to the end of one declarative statement, he smiles at you and then says some version of: “And another thing …” Lee vacillates between talking with you and talking at you, as if every moment could be his last opportunity to say his piece. And I love it, for the same reason I always loved getting my black uncle going about politics, race and his issues with Obama, in a room full of family members to whom 44 could do no wrong. Does he have an air about him that suggests wasting his time will not be tolerated? Completely. Is he brash, contrarian and intellectually intimidating? Absolutely. On this bench, the angry Spike Lee I’ve been hearing about my entire life is nowhere to be found. Getting Spike Lee going is delightful if you know how to hang, how to spar and how to shut up. And he is begging us to educate ourselves about our history. ![]() He wants us to start being honest with ourselves about this country. There are three intertwined ideas that he routinely returns to, both as a black American and as an artist who is dead-set on holding up a mirror to society, ever hopeful that we’ll eventually open our eyes. That should come as no surprise, once you understand what Lee truly cares about. “And therefore, it was directly responsible for black people being murdered and lynched. “The film brought about the rebirth of the Klan,” Lee says. “But the social and political implications of the film were never discussed.” During that period, the KKK was largely inactive. He recalls being shown 1915’s The Birth of a Nation as a student at New York University’s film school. The older he got, the more frequent he found it to appear-and the more he knew he needed to not only learn the truth, but also tell the truth. This selective understanding of American history continued to rear its head as Lee marched into adulthood. “It was, ‘Wasn’t it great?,’ and that was it.” “There was no discussion afterward for historical context, no discussion about Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen in those stereotypical roles,” he says. Lee saw Gone With the Wind as a student in New York City on a class trip, when it was reissued in theaters. The camera then zooms out to show a tattered Confederate flag waving proudly. As she makes her way through the rows of the injured and deceased, the minstrel song “Old Folks at Home” provides a soundtrack to the slaughter. ![]() The film begins abruptly, with a scene of Scarlett O’Hara at a train yard after the Battle of Atlanta, from the 1939 film-and American institution- Gone With the Wind. Even before I sent him the script, I knew brother man could do it.” “I told him, ‘I knew you before you were born,” says Lee. When Lee committed to the film, he called Washington-the son of Lee’s longtime friend and collaborator Denzel Washington-and told him to read Stallworth’s book, Black Klansman. His directorial debut, Get Out, which is also a sophisticated commentary on race in America that is routinely (and not quite accurately) described as a comedy, became a box-office sensation last year and earned Peele an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The project came to Lee by way of Jordan Peele, a producer on the film. The timeliness of the film-and its early acclaim-has prompted many people to declare that Spike Lee is back. Footage from Charlottesville serves as the film’s coda, a necessary gut punch both for those who internalized the film as another dark reminder of our country’s history and those who wrongfully spent two hours treating it as a buddy-cop comedy. The film is also being released on the anniversary of a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and a counterprotest that resulted in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, after a Nazi supporter drove a car into the protesters. ![]() The film represents another opportunity for one of society’s most distinctive voices to make a statement at a time when America’s politics on race and identity are at their most fractured in a generation. Based on the early-1970s true story of Ron Stallworth, the first African-American detective to work for the Colorado Springs police department, the film centers on Stallworth (played by John David Washington) and a veteran Jewish cop (played by Adam Driver) as they find a unique, and risky, way to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.īlacKkKlansman is Lee’s most critically heralded and accessible effort in over a decade. It premiered in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix award, the second most prestigious prize of the event. Spike Lee is a subversive walking advertisement for both Spike Lee and his new film, BlacKkKlansman, out Aug.
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