BlacKkKlansman is based on one of those stories that proves truth is always stranger than fiction, using Ron Stallworth, the first black cop to enter the Colorado Springs police force in the 1970s, as the empowered hero who won’t take shit from anyone no matter how much they goad him or insist that while he might think he’s “hot shit,” he’s actually nothing more than a “cold fart.” Ron knows this isn’t the case, that the white man merely gets off on telling the perpetuated lie to the black man that he is inferior, less than. As Malcolm X reminded, “Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?” It is a series of questions very much like the ones posed by Stokely Carmichael, who becomes Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins) after forming the Black Power movement. It is Ture who presents Stallworth (John David Washington) with these queries as he is given the “opportunity” to go undercover as the only black police officer able to successfully infiltrate such an enterprise (in short, the police chief, played by Robert John “Bart Bass” Bridges, is desperate enough to gather intel on the Black Power movement by any means necessary). And as he sits there in the crowd watching everyone around him become awakened and galvanized to these truths they never thought it could be okay to think let alone say out loud, suddenly, Stallworth, too, “has the epiphany” that he is angry, has been pandering to the wrong side all this time.
As one giant allegory likening the present regime and its “leader” to the KKK in accepted mainstream government form, in addition to making the obvious and necessary comparison between the KKK and the police force as a whole in the United States, BlacKkKlansman appropriately opens with white supremacist Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard (Alec Baldwin) making an “informative” video about how the “inferior race” is taking over, reciting and repeating different hate-filled slurs whenever he gets the script wrong. That Baldwin is the standard-issue Donald Trump impersonator on Saturday Night Live is very much not lost on the audience, who already immediately feels as though they’ve been made to feel intelligent by connecting this dot.
Unanimously well-reviewed, BlacKkKlansman is that rare “think piece” of a movie that comes along in an age where we’re starved to feel that someone can comment on anything with poignancy. Spike Lee, now sixty-one, in turn favors overly explanatory dialogue that panders to the lowest common denominator audience member–for instance, do we really need one of Lee’s characters to give the backstory on D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of A Nation just because it came out in 1915? Can we not expect just a little bit more from the audience, that they might actually have some cognizance of significant cinematic history? In fact, much of Lee’s style throughout the film takes on a sort of skewed Tarantino bent, the latter’s own Django Unchained, released in 2012, also fond of dredging up the rhetoric that immortalized Griffith as an early god of cinema, and is far more satirical than this. From Calvin J. Candie’s (Leonardo Di Caprio) pronunciation of “huhwhiiite cake” to the notion of “mandingo fighting,” the cartoonish, highly overblown style of Django is what makes it far more comical in its absurdity grounded in realism than the almost “special documentary for FXX” tone of BlacKkKlansman. Some would say it’s rooted in racism to even suggest that a white writer-director could comment more effectively on prejudice in America than a black one, but it seems, in the competition for “satire winner,” this is precisely the case.
A film that could just as easily be titled Inside Man (like Lee’s 2006 Clive Owen-starring project) BlacKkKlansman is about the notion that the only way to fuck shit up and blow up the system is by infiltrating it (though some more realistic minds know better than to believe that the white man would ever fully surrender his power). This is a hopeful idea, in one respect, but like the leader of the Black Student Union and love interest of Ron, Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), some of us are fully aware that systemic racism may very well never go away so long as the extremist far right continues to exist and flourish.
As Ron goes in deeper and deeper to his subterfuge within the KKK via phone, it’s quickly made evident that he will need a white face to do his actual, physical bidding in successfully infiltrating the klan and learning more about the extent of how terroristic they are. This comes in the form of Philip “Flip” Zimmerman (Adam Driver), a fellow officer and a non-practicing Jew who Ron accuses of not having any skin in the game despite the fact that this is his war too. Lee, of course, has always made his only concession toward accepting the “white” man as spotlighting the blatant Jewish discrimination that occurs anywhere outside of New York City. Yet this is another vaguely unfortunate lumping in. Just because black people and Jewish people have long been marginalized minorities does not mean they “automatically” like each other or form alliances to rise up against the oppressor.
At the same time, Lee’s employment of the Jewish/black connection is just one of many non-subtleties that have left people (perhaps mainly white people) thinking, Oh this is so powerful, such amazing use of metaphor, he’s saying something so profound. But honestly, Lee isn’t telling us anything new. And that is the main problem with BlacKkKlansman, it is all so over the top in its overtness and expository dialogue, and then, when it’s not, he overly hits us on the head with symbolism (a camera shot that lingers just a little too long on signs like, “America: Love It or Leave It” or a poster of Nixon that reads, “Now more than ever”). It is a “satire,” one supposes, except that there is nothing even all that embellished in his storytelling method to laugh at (for the reality isn’t all that hilarious), or find particular wit in.
Most movies of a political nature like to at least offer some sign of a solution or, at the bare minimum, an ending not so blatantly “tacked on” to create a somewhat “feel good” vibe, though it’s difficult to feel good about the fact that nothing has changed in this country so much as worsened, with archival footage of the real David Duke (played by Topher Grace) at the Charlottesville protest turned riot in 2017 serving as Lee’s “Michael Moore” moment of denouement.
In the end, the movie is dedicated to a white girl (Heather Heyer), who yes, did die tragically and egregiously in the counter-protest against white supremacist hate. But somehow, it feels weird, that after all this, a white lady gets the glory of a “REST IN POWER” nod.
This is the thirty-second feature Lee has directed (this excludes short films and segments in other movies). At this point, Lee’s place as a crusader and advocate for the equality of black people (all power to all the people, as Patrice would say) is indisputable. No one is or could question the ways in which he’s opened up the eyes not only of those who already know all too well the plight, but also those who could never possibly understand it without inhabiting a specific color of skin. Yet everything about BlacKkKlansman screams that Lee took one look at the frames in the cutting room, spliced them together rotely as though there’s a dotted line that says “insert powerful message here” and wrapped it up for his audience and himself in a bow marked “meaning.”
Just as you can look at The Birth of a Nation as an objective masterpiece and a landmark of cinema (much to one’s dismay), so too, can you watch BlacKkKlansman and see that it is adequate at best and pedantic at worse. And also kind of a wannabe The Nice Guys.
