“BlacKkKlansman” presents racism as a dichotomy between the absurd
and the dangerous; the film’s intentional laughs often get caught in
one’s throat. Director Spike Lee and his co-screenwriters Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott adapt a tale of deception based on some “fo’ real, fo’ real sh*t” that was first covered in Ron Stallworth’s
2014 memoir. Stallworth was a Black Colorado Springs police officer who
successfully infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, going so far as to speak
with David Duke on several occasions. Stallworth’s undercover police
work, aided by an immeasurable assist from his White partner, Flip
Zimmerman (Adam Driver) helped expose and quash an attack on Black activists.
This is not Lee’s first cinematic depiction of the KKK. In “Malcolm X,”
he presented them riding “victoriously” into the night while a
preposterously large moon hung in the sky. It’s a quick scene but its
intentions are unmistakable: Lee is evoking D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth
of a Nation,” one of the most effective pieces of propaganda racism ever
had, but he’s not paying it any tribute. Instead, the obvious fakery of
the gorgeous, celestial backdrop behind the Klan served as a middle
finger to Griffith and his film. Though the action in Lee’s scene is
dramatically potent and played straight, the technique itself is
parodic, as if to call bullshit on the notion that Griffith’s filmmaking
prowess excused the vileness of what he depicted.
In
“BlacKkKlansman,” Lee has more middle fingers to wave at Griffith’s
alleged “masterpiece,” starting with the use of footage from “The Birth
of a Nation” itself. We are shown it being screened at a Klan meeting,
and it also figures in a pre-credits short film starring Alec Baldwin, playing the awesomely named Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard. As in “Glengarry Glen Ross,”
he sinks his teeth into a ranting monologue, except rather than harping
on steak knives and potential unemployment, this incarnation of Baldwin
is peddling racism on a filmstrip. And he’s far from perfect at doing
so; several times he stammers over his words or needs to be fed lines
from an off-screen script person.
What Dr. Beauregard says is
disgusting, yet it prepares us for the horrible slurs and comments we’ll
hear almost non-stop for the next 135 minutes. Lee projects distracting
images over Beauregard as he delivers his imperfect line readings,
highlighting his incompetence to the point where you might ask yourself
“who’d believe a thing this guy is selling?” But Dr. Beauregard will
have plenty of buyers. They’ll forgive that he looks ridiculous because
they believe, as Randy Newman once sang, that “he may be a fool, but he’s our fool.”
Next, we meet our protagonist, who is played by Denzel Washington’s lookalike son, John David Washington. Like his Pops, the younger Washington is beloved by Lee’s camera. From his first appearance, cinematographer Chayse Irvin
caresses his handsomeness with a delicate touch that is curiously
chaste for a Spike Lee Joint. As Ron Stallworth approaches the Colorado
Springs Police Department building, the camera hangs above him as he
walks into frame. With his impressive '70s-era threads and an enviable
halo of Afro-formed hair, Stallworth looks as if he has emerged from a
funky, soul-filled ether. Using our viewpoint like a mirror, he pats his
coif and stares directly at us with a confidence that will be
repeatedly tested. His job interview serves as his first quiz.
“We’ve
never had a Black police officer,” Stallworth is told. “So you’ll be
the Jackie Robinson of the Colorado Springs police department.” This
analogy is a loaded and telling statement; Robinson was ruthlessly
taunted by baseball fans who hurled the ugliest rhetoric at him, to
which he could offer no response lest he be seen as “uncivilized” by the
White fans who didn’t want him there in the first place.
Police Chief Bridges (Robert John Burke)
wants to ensure there will be no Negro insurrections if his officers
get a little rowdy with the new recruit. “What would you do if someone
here called you a nigger?” Bridges’ cohort asks Stallworth. “That would
happen?” Stallworth asks incredulously. The response to this question
provides the biggest laugh of the year.
How you look will lead to
assumptions about how you should act, and what you should believe. This
is an underlying theme of “BlacKkKlansman.” Stallworth wants to be an
undercover detective, but as Zimmerman notes, no rookie has ever been
given this work, and certainly not a rookie of color. However, after a
tense stint in the records room, Stallworth is assigned to infiltrate a
Black student group’s rally with activist and former Black Panther Kwame
Ture (an electric Corey Hawkins).
Chief Bridges’ intentions for this stakeout are outwardly racist—he
doesn’t want the town’s Black folks to suddenly become radicalized and
excited by the fervor of Ture’s speech—but Stallworth takes the
assignment in order to connect with the community.
Stallworth’s stakeout is the film’s first brush with the concept of
passing. After all, passing is a form of going undercover, albeit
permanently. The rally introduces Stallworth to student group organizer
Patrice (Laura Harrier),
whose rightful suspicion about the cops will keep him passing as a
civilian in order to woo her. But “BlacKkKlansman” really delves into
the art of passing when Stallworth becomes involved with its most common
form, that of an African-American passing for White. After seeing an ad
in the paper for the Klan, Stallworth calls the number and convincingly
spouts all kinds of offensive invective. The sight of a Black man
talking about how much he hates Blacks plays up the absurd side of
racism. As a result, Stallworth’s evil White persona gets invited to a
meet-and-greet.
Here’s where Flip Zimmerman enters the picture.
There’s credible evidence that the KKK may be planning an act of
violence during the appearance of another famous civil rights activist
(whose identity I won’t reveal). Stallworth wants to get close enough to
the Klan to thwart it. But his phone shenanigans can only take him so
far; for personal appearances, he needs a more convincing guise.
Zimmerman, a non-practicing Jewish man, gets the job. Billing themselves
“The Stallworth Brothers,” the two share an identity while working the
case. Zimmerman is the “face” of Ron Stallworth, and the real Stallworth
is the suspicious Black man following him around in the shadows taking
surveillance pictures. Just for fun, Zimmerman learns how to mimic
Stallworth’s “White voice” by reciting lyrics by America’s true poet of
Soul, James Brown.
With
this undercover case, “BlacKkKlansman” becomes the story of two people
engaged in the same bout of passing as a racist White person. Though
Zimmerman, by virtue of the correct skin color, has what seems to be the
easier task, he also bears the psychological brunt of having to pretend
to be something that would despise his true identity. It’s here where
Lee works that aforementioned dichotomy, often playing Stallworth’s
phone interactions for laughs (especially when talking to an excellent Topher Grace
as David Duke) but keeping a masterful, tense grip on Zimmerman’s
scenes. There’s always a sense he’ll be outed, especially by the
tenacious Felix (a scary Jasper Pääkkönen),
who immediately pegs him as Jewish and never lets up on his suspicions.
Eventually, the two tonal halves converge in a climactic race against
time that is among the most harrowing and provocative work Lee has done.
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. As someone who never gave much thought to his
Jewishness, Zimmerman cannot help but dwell on it all the time amidst
the constant anti-Semitic comments of his newfound friends.
"Why
don't you think you have skin in this game?," Stallworth asks his
partner. Because Zimmerman has the capacity to dodge the hatred that
would be directed at him should he choose to do so. But I have often
wondered how much this act of self-preservation cost the person who
pulled it off. For Zimmerman, there's the ultimate goal of possible
revenge against the Klan, or at the very least, an embarrassing exposure
of their full ignorance. But for someone like a relative of mine who
chose to live his life as a White man in North Carolina, the only goal
was survival. How much of his soul did that cost, if any?
I
believe Lee is similarly intrigued by Zimmerman. Unlike Stallworth, Lee
never gives us a scene where Zimmerman fully feels respite nor relief
from his role-playing once the case kicks in. At least Stallworth has a
romance to distract him, even if he's being dishonest about what he does
for a living. There are two scenes in “BlacKkKlansman” where it feels
as if Lee and editor Barry Alexander Brown
let them run on too long, until you realize that these scenes are
showing Black people in moments where they are not worrying about
anything but the joy and the power of being themselves. By contrast,
Zimmerman’s scenes with the Klan always feel awful even when the crew is
supposedly enjoying themselves—these scenes can’t end soon enough.
“BlacKkKlansman” clearly wants to be the anti-“Birth of a Nation,”
and I’m sure some less-enlightened people will consider it on that same
level of racial propaganda. But what else do Lee and his producer Jordan Peele
want to accomplish with this astonishing, funny and important film? The
answer is most likely in the film’s coda, which shows footage from the
incident in Charlottesville that cost Heather Heyer her life. In fact,
this film opens on the anniversary weekend of those events. This raw
footage, which arrives after perhaps the best use ever of Lee’s
trademark people-mover shot, is both a massively effective, righteous
trolling and a terrifying reminder that we are not so far removed from
the period-piece world we have just witnessed. And Lee, a man who never
gave a damn about what anyone thought of his politics, is fearless in
speaking truth to power with this film. Lee dedicates “BlacKkKlansman”
to Heyer’s memory, writing “rest in power” under a picture of her before
ending his film with the only Prince song that could have ended it.
This
is not only one of the year’s best films but one of Lee’s best as well.
Juggling the somber and the hilarious, the sacred and the profane, the
tragedy and the triumph, the director is firing on all cylinders here.
"BlacKkKlansman" is a true conversation starter, and probably a
conversation ender as well.
