The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Brilliant ‘BlacKkKlansman’ pulls no punches on racism
Based on Ron Stallworth’s autobiography, fascinating film one of Spike Lee’s best
During the tornado-like news cycles that leave us too little time to process, digest and analyze events, we’re fortunate to have a filmmaker like Spike Lee to provide critical perspective and historical context about the racism plaguing our nation. His latest, “BlacKkKlansman,” does that and more. It demands that we confront the past to understand what’s going on in the present.
Lee’s extensive filmmaking career has been punctuated with passionate, fearless films (“Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X,” the documentary “4 Lit tle Girls,” to name but a few). And much of his work is pinned to real stories that expose racism and capture the black experience in a divided America. (OK, he’s had his misses too, including the “Oldboy” remake, among others.)
Lee’s best — and BlacKkKlansman” fits snugly into that category — never soft-pedals what’s going on. That the film’s release comes near the one-year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacist rally is no coincidence.
One of t he g reatest strengths of “BlacK- kKlansman” is its incredible story, drawn from real events. After spotting an ad in the newspaper in the ’70s, black investigative officer Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, hitting all the right notes) calls the number listed and poses as a Ku Klux Klan wannabe. Stallworth, whose autobiographical book was the source of Lee’s movie, was Colorado Springs’ f irst black police officer. He hatched a plan with others in the department to then have a partner (Adam Driver) sub for him at meetings with white supremacists. Eventually, Stallworth even talked to the Klan’s Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace, in a careerhigh performance), who issued him his Klan card.
It’s one of those unbelievable true tales that wouldn’t fly if it were fiction.
Building on Stallworth’s “Black Klansman,” screenwriters Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee have crafted an adaptation that links the past to the present.
The opening sequence sets the tone, venturing back to such movies as “Gone with the Wind” with the Confederate flag. Later in the film, incendiary scenes taken from the 1915 silent film “The Birth of a Nation” are effectively woven in.
But it is hearing the hate spewed by a white supremacist (Alec Baldwin) in a black-and-white segment early in the film that let’s you know what is to come. It is jarring to say the least.
The film shifts to Colorado Springs as Stallworth gets stuck in the deadend records department and deals with another officer who’s racist. Stallworth gets his chance to become an undercover officer, going to a speaking engagement organized by the college’s Black Student Union where Black Panther leader Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins) is appearing. While there he meets and takes an interest in the Black Student Union’s main organizer, Patrice (Laura Harrier).
Eventually, Stallworth winds up posing as a KKK member on the phone, with his Jewish partner Flip Zimmerman (Driver) portraying him in person at organizational meetings. It is among this crew of KKK members that Lee’s film reaches its skin-crawling zenith. Lee’s depiction of these meetings, with this cast of hatemongers who are armed, dangerous and ready to burn crosses, comes across as a freak show that is chilling and horrifying.
All this leads to an intense fictionalized showdown — the film has taken liberties such as making Stallworth’s partner Jewish and creating the character of Patrice — while pairing it with Harry Belafonte portraying Jerome Turner and describing in harrowing detail the real 1916 lynching of teenager Jesse Washington in Texas. It is a wrenching point in a film that possesses a fiery sense of purpose, one that hits home near the film’s end with footage of recent devastating events and the reactions to them.
Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” has much to say about being black in America, as do two recent, Oaklandset films, “Sorry to Bother You” and “Blindspotting.” Each takes a different narrative route but possesses a similar theme: America has a long way to go before it meaningfully addresses the toxic residue of racism. A long way.