New Release Review: BlacKkKlansman

BlacKkKlansman

(2018. Director: Spike Lee Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace)

SYNOPSIS:

In 1979, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) becomes the first ever black man hired as a detective for the Colorado Springs Police Department. He quickly finds himself working in intelligence and begins to lead his own undercover investigation into the Ku Klux Klan to expose them as a dangerous terrorist organisation.

To discuss the present, sometimes you must first look at the past.

In 1915, D.W. Griffith released his magnum opus The Birth of a Nation. It was a cultural phenomenon. Pioneering new techniques in cinematography, narrative and score, it was like nothing audiences had seen before and instantly became a massive box office success. (An article published in Time Magazine in 2015 estimated that, if adjusted for inflation, The Birth of a Nation earned the equivalent of a modern $1.8 billion, in range of the most financially successful films of all time). It was a turning point for the new medium of cinema being taken seriously as an art form and even became the first film ever to be screened at the White House (for an audience including President Woodrow Wilson). There is no denying that it is one of the most important and influential pieces of cinema history. However it is also one of the most unashamedly racist films ever made.

Griffith's film was filled with crude, offensive stereotypes of African-Americans, including one villainous black character portrayed (by a white actor wearing 'blackface', of course) as a bestial rapist of white women. Worse still, the larger cast of black extras are treated as a threat to society, filling ballot boxes with their 'corrupt' votes and needing to be 'put in their place' by the films heroes leading the charge of the Ku Klux Klan. By today's standards, it's a sickening piece of hateful propaganda and was the spark required to ignite the movement to rebuild the, then mostly disbanded, Klan as a national entity. (Merchandisers at the time were even said to sell 'Klan hoods' to excited cinemagoers and Klan themed fancy dress parties broke out around the country.) The film was still officially being used by the Ku Klux Klan themselves to help recruit members as late as the 1970s. However Griffith's directing power was also an inspiration for numerous artists that followed, leading to him being seen by many as the father of cinema. This is a film which not only changed film history for the better, but social and political history for the worse, and is likely responsible for years of harassment, assaults and murders inspired by it's cruel ideology.

In the early 1980s, New York University's highly respected film school included The Birth of a Nation in their required viewing. One student was so disgusted by the film's content that he made his next assessed short film (named "The Answer") an angry riposte to that film's reputation. The department were so offended by this short film that they planned to terminate the student's academic ambitions right there. Unfortunately for them, they had already guaranteed the student another year of studies as a reward for his stellar work volunteering in the university's equipment room. That student was named Spike Lee. A decade later, after becoming a successful and highly respected director, Lee would return to NYU as a teacher and then professor of film studies and was eventually appointed as Artistic Director in 2002.

Spike Lee clearly never forgot the lesson on the power of cinema to change society. Every film in Lee's extensive and varied career packs some political punch. Even his more 'mainstream' targeted movies such as The 25th Hour or the underrated Inside Man aren't lacking in social commentary and others border on outright agitprop. His latest release, BlacKkKlansman, is no exception.

BlacKkKlansman doesn't waste time setting out it's intentions. The film opens with a famous crane shot lifted from the beloved civil war epic Gone With The Wind. However as the camera tracks back through a torn, but still fluttering, Confederate flag it continues the motion right out of the cinema screen, revealing that this scene is itself being projected to an audience as a film within the film. In fact it's being shown by a white supremacist as part of a lecture on the sacrifices made by the 'noble South' to protect the supposedly dignified era of slavery and segregation. He stumbles in his presentation. His stutters, coughs and mispronunciations raise easy laughs and help to make his ugly rhetoric easier to sit through. Meanwhile film clips supporting his grotesque arguments continue to play behind him (yes, including The Birth of a Nation) Sometimes these are projected directly onto his face, his pale skin becoming a canvas for them. He becomes one with the regressive images being screened upon his person. There's a lot to unpack in this bold introduction: the way a weak, if monstrous, man emboldens his image through media, the way humour can make horror more palatable, the relationship between the past and present (this scene appears to take place in the same 70s setting as the rest of the film, and references to much further before, but many of the soundbites in his speech will sound discomfortingly familiar to politically engaged modern audiences) even the strange balance between literal documented facts and an emotional 'truth' (the man speaking, Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard, is a fictional construct, and is played by an instantly recognisable movie star whose cameo I won't spoil here). We're already amused, engaged and uncomfortable and the film has only been rolling for a few minutes. Welcome back, Spike!

After this bold introduction, the film takes a more straightforward approach and we get to meet our protagonist. Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is an eager new recruit to the Colorado Springs police. He is also African American and this fact clearly causes some tension with some of the other (all white) detectives in his department. Despite this, he shows enough confidence and ambition to get himself transferred from the records room into intelligence. At least that's what he believes happens, but it quickly becomes apparent that he has been moved onto investigative police work due to his unique ability to blend in while undercover in Black Rights movements. This is how he meets the student activist Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier) who he starts a relationship with and who becomes a sort of walking embodiment of the Black Empowerment movement in America at the time. At the end of that case he skims the newspaper while awaiting his next assignment and sees an advert requesting new members for the Ku Klux Klan. One phone call later and he is running an investigation aimed at infiltrating 'the organisation' (as they apparently like to be called.)

If the idea of a black man going undercover in the Ku Klux Klan sounds more like the plot of a ridiculous comedy than a tense political thriller then this observation hasn't been lost on the people behind BlacKkKlansman. Between the fun 70's-pastiche look of the film and it's casual pacing, it is a surprisingly amusing and easy watch for a film which has such ugly and worryingly relevant targets. In this way, it feels as much the brainchild of producer Jordan Peele as it does a typical Spike Lee joint. Peele, who originally made his name with witty television sketch comedy, blazed into the film industry as writer-director of last years powerfully satirical horror Get Out. That film skillfully played out ludicrous situations which felt uncomfortably close to the real life struggles of minority populations, explicitly that of black men in modern America, and again and again hit that disturbing sweet spot in between farce and nightmare. It says something about how well the film defied categorisation that it was nominated for a Golden Globe in the Comedy category despite being generally considered a horror film (and when asked for clarification, Peele himself described it, not entirely untruthfully, as a documentary.) BlacKkKlansman aims for something similar and, for the most part, it succeeds. However it's horror stems less from overtly metaphorical Twilight Zone-esque twists but instead from lightly fictionalised versions of real life monsters who really did exist at this time and (as the film clearly wants to remind us)' still pose similar risks today.

The 1970's setting is used playfully. The film is shot on 35mm film stock and the production design has a carefully curated colour palette to feel similar to that particular era of filmmaking. The soundtrack is equally effective combining some excellent, atmospheric needle drops (including an unreleased song from the late genius Prince over the end credits) with a score that features jazzy percussion and wah-wah-guitar effects which evoke classic Blaxploitation cinema. (That genre of films get's discussed at length in one scene of Ron and Patrice bonding while debating the strengths of each film's heroes. This acts as a counterpoint to the use of The Birth of a Nation and Gone With The Wind to show how films can be take a role in the exploitation and humiliation of an oppressed minority. This conversation, in contrast, shows how film can also offer an escape and a catharsis to the oppressed via power-fantasy.) The costumes and haircuts of the film's protagonists are not just era-specific but are stylishly iconic, which creates a clever contrast with the Klan member villains who, when out of the hoods and cloaks, look the epitome of the banality of evil.

In fact this banality is one of the film's most chilling aspects. The Klan are not portrayed simply as inhuman monsters. Instead they are mostly seen as a bunch of distinctly mediocre, suburban men who spend most of their time shooting pool at their local dive bar or munching sandwiches in each others' drab living rooms, while casually dropping plans for the eradication of 'degenerate races' into otherwise mundane conversation. You genuinely wouldn't be surprised if you were to find out that some of them weren't fully on board with genocidal race war but were merely going along with the plan to give some meaning to their fairly sad, unremarkable lives. This leads to one of the film's best casting decisions; having David Duke played by Topher Grace (Spider Man 3, That 70's Show). As 'Grand Wizard' of the KKK, Duke held (and continues to hold) a dangerous amount of power, especially considering his nefarious plans to make the Klan appear more acceptable in mainstream society while pushing for either himself (or *cough*cough* someone like him) to take political office. Whilst the film doesn't forget how threatening Duke's goals are, it resists any temptation to make him an imposing figure himself and instead Grace plays him as a nebbish dweeb who probably needs his army of dumb racists around him to prevent the rest of the world from being compelled to shove him in a locker on a daily basis.

The film's other noticeable casting decision is Adam Driver (Star Wars, Logan Lucky) as Ron's partner, Flip Zimmerman. No matter how good an actor Ron is on the phone, there is no way that he can attend a Klan meeting in person without obviously standing out. Therefore Ron and his fellow officers come to the conclusion that they need 'the right white man' to play the face of Ron when 'in person' meetings are required. Enter Flip, a 'white seeming' Jewish cop who takes on the unenviable job of imitating the fictional persona of his partner while surrounded by dangerous fascists. Adding Spike Lee to an impressive list of directors the young Mr Driver has already worked with, Flip is in many ways the film's soul and has the biggest and most thematically powerful arc of any of the film's characters. Flip was raised secular and has been 'passing' as a white man his whole life, so it is only once he finds himself immersed in the fierce antisemitism of his targets that he truly begins to acknowledge his own identity and its importance to him. "I never thought about it before but now it's all I can think about." he  states at one point. It's a moment that will feel particularly poignant to many secular Jews and other minorities in the audience who, after years of general acceptance, are recently finding themselves forced to discuss their very personhood on a near daily basis.

Of course this would be to ignore the film's actual lead actor, John David Washington. Most known for his role in the Dwayne Johnson starring TV series Ballers, BlacKkKlansman looks set to be Washington's breakthrough into film. The son of Spike Lee regular Denzel Washington, John David Washington exudes his father's natural charisma in the title role and remains effortlessly cool even when his character is having his values and assumptions challenged. That said, although Washington has great screen presence, his Ron remains something of an enigma. His emotional arc is kept internal and instead the dilemmas that he faces become externalised via the other characters who act as the angels and devils on his shoulders; whether this is Flip and the other cops or the nascent Black Empowerment movement, best represented by Patrice.

Duality is a theme that comes up again and again in this film. Whether it's Ron and Flip having to combine together into the fictional Klansman named Ron Stallworth, or the fact that, even outside of their performance in this case, both Ron and Flip feel the need to 'play a role' in their private and professional lives and appear to be conflicted about which one is their real self. Even the KKK themselves have an odd split between their desire to seem like harmless, mundane everymen and their private hopes for murderous insurrection.  (This is best represented by the film's most terrifying creation: Ashlie Atkinson's Connie, a doting, subservient housewife who spends her nights fantasising about genocidal 'cleansing.') It becomes especially pronounced in the film's comparison between its two race-related secret movements. The 'both sides' arguments put forward comparing white supremacists to other racial organisations is one that has been used by fascists for generations as a bad faith argument to either distract from their crimes or to damage the reputation of those who stand up against them. Lee feints towards doing so, but only to make the differences between these movements even more stark. Yes, chants of 'Black Power!' can be easily intercut with the Klan's chants of 'White Power!' but only one of these groups also repeats the clearly el
egalitarian refrain 'All Power to ALL the People.' And while one group meets to discuss the nightmarish horror of a real life lynching, the other meets to giggle and cheer at a fictionalised film of one (yes, it's D.W. Griffith again). It's even noticeable how the audience for a Black rights lecture is split fairly evenly along gender lines with women holding positions of power in the organisation, while the Klan's most loyal servant, Connie, is reduced to fetching drinks and entertaining the other women in the kitchen while the men do all the planning.

The risk of fictionalising real events is not just something BlacKkKlansmen covers, but something it struggles with itself. Earlier this month the film came under question from Sorry To Bother You director Boots Riley for how much it plays around with the truth in telling its story. Riley, himself a fan of Spike Lee's earlier works, contends that the film is wrong to lionise the police as the heroes of this story when in truth they were riddled with racists themselves and spent considerably longer on their investigations of black activists than they ever did on white supremacist organisations. It's a fair criticism, but is maybe unfair on the film by judging it as a story about the life of the real-life Ron Stallworth. Lee's interest is not in telling a strange story about events that happened in the 1970s; he wants to use that story as a mirror to tell us about the world we are currently living in. Whether it's KKK chanting 'America First' at one on their meetings or discussions on whether a 'man like Duke' could ever really become president, everything in this film feels terrifyingly current. And that is before the film eventually blurs its period imagery into real life modern day footage in a chilling denouement that ranks among Lee's most powerful statements. Also, it's clear that Lee's intention is not to make a film for a black audience who are already all too aware of the risks they face, but one intended to shake white audiences out of their comfortable stupor and join the good fight before it's too late. The phantom of fascism will never be entirely exorcised from our culture. This is more clear now than it has in living memory. If we are ever to stop it, then it will require those in power to stand on the side of right. Whether you carry a badge or a picket sign we all have a role to play in defending society from this rot.

BlacKkKlansman is film of contradictions. It's mostly a breezy and entertaining drama that scores some genuinely big laughs at some of its more farcical situations but it is also a film which touches on one of the most horrifying threats we face right now here in Europe, but even more so in America. The Birth of a Nation may continue to be required viewing for film students around the world, but BlacKkKlansmen should be required viewing for anyone wanting to understand modern day America and the depth of the challenges it faces right now.

Review by The Mogul