The fight for recognition
Spike Lee brings realism to his take on the Vietnam War
Spike Lee was just 10 in 1967 when Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the Vietnam. It wasn’t his fight, Ali said then. The Vietnamese “never lynched me”.
Ali’s stand, and the subsequent vitriol that came his way, made an enormous impression on Lee. His latest film, Da 5 Bloods, opens with footage of Ali’s speech.
“Everyone is all lovey-dovey with Muhammad Ali now that he’s dead,” says Lee. “But at one time, Muhammad Ali was the most hated man in America.”
Da 5 Bloods, is the first major film to put the experience of black Vietnam veterans front and centre. Lee bookends the movie with Ali and other black activist figures from the 60s, framing Da 5 Bloods as not just a war film but an inquiry into what patriotism means for African Americans.
“The narrative that’s been painted of American heroism is John Wayne,” says Lee. “So I felt it was appropriate that we have true American patriots.”
Lee’s timing is, as ever, prescient. His movie is arriving just as millions have taken to the streets to protest endemic racism and the death of George Floyd. The time couldn’t be riper for a film that considers who “true Americans” really are.
“American patriotism is when you say: (Expletive) is (expletive)-ed up. People like Agent Orange who say, ‘America, love it or leave it’ — they’re un-American,” says Lee, using his favoured nickname for President Donald Trump. “They’re not patriotic. Anybody that tells black folks ‘America love it or leave it’, they need to get the (expletive) out of here because black folks built this (expletive).”
The unrest following Floyd’s death — which for some recalled Lee’s Do the Right Thing — has yet again made Lee’s movies all the more urgent. Da 5 Bloods, his first film to confront Vietnam, further expands Lee’s passionate, righteous and essential survey of American history and race, a roiling body of work that already spans the 60s of Malcolm X, postKatrina New Orleans and contemporary Chicago.
It’s about African American vets (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Norm Lewis) returning to Vietnam to search for the remains of their fallen squad leader (Chadwick Boseman) and lost treasure. It’s Lee’s second war film, after Miracle at St. Anna, which followed a group of soldiers from an all-black division during World War II. In it, a black veteran eyes John Wayne in The Longest Day on TV and says, “Pilgrim, we fought for this country, too.”
The contributions of black soldiers have long been under-represented, but their minor roles in films of the Vietnam War — is especially egregious. African American troops accounted for 11 per cent of troops in Vietnam (though only a fraction of officers). In 1965, they were 23 per cent of all combat troops.
“We have been almost systematically disappeared from those experiences.
“Vietnam, when you look at Platoon, Apocalypse Now, black soldiers are on the peripheries-slashalmost nonexistent,” says Lindo. He recalls being especially upset by Oliver Stone’s Platoon, in which black soldiers are repeatedly seen either dying, fleeing or erring. “I don’t remember whether I walked out on the film but I do remember being completely disgusted.”
The original script for Da 5 Bloods, by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, was titled The Last Tour. It was written for white veterans and first brought to Stone. When that didn’t go anywhere, Lee was drawn to its potential.
“I knew from the get-go that it was a great script but I wanted to flip it to tell it from the perspective of black Vietnam vets,” says Lee.
He has woven in documentary footage, sketching the film’s story across a wider, ongoing black history.
“People have a tendency when they look at historical footage to go, ‘Oh, that was a long time ago. Oh, we’ve moved so far,’ he says.
“But when you couple that with present-day footage, that makes it very blunt like: This (expletive) never went away.”