‘BlacKkKlansman’ a timely film

Cannes cheers Lee’s rebuke of Trump America

CANNES, France, May 15, (Agencies): Spike Lee drew rave reviews Tuesday for his new movie “BlacKkKlansman”, a searing indictment of the white nationalist roots of the Trump era which premiered at Cannes to a lengthy standing ovation.

Lee, 61, tells the flabbergasting true story of Ron Stallworth, the first African-American on the Colorado Springs police force who managed to infiltrate the highest levels of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1970s.

The cop, played by John David Washington, son of two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington, conducts much of the investigation on the phone and enlists the help of a white Jewish officer (Adam Driver) when it is time to meet the Klansmen face-to-face.

Lee takes aim at white supremacy, racist police violence, cross burning, intimidation and marginalisation in a movie that maintains a farcical tone through long stretches given the almost unbelievable premise.

However the final scene splices in chilling footage of last August’s white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia in which a counter-demonstrator, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, was killed and several others injured. Trump is later seen on camera blaming people on “both sides” for the bloodshed.

In the film, former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) leads “America First” chants and even dreams of putting a white supremacist in the White House one day.

Lee dedicates the film to Heyer’s memory — “Rest in power” — and will release the film in cinemas on the first anniversary of the Charlottesville protests.

Early reviews were overwhelmingly positive, saying that what Lee’s film lacks in subtlety it makes up for with righteous fury and a fitting sense of the absurd.

“Lee’s latest is as much a compelling black empowerment story as it is an electrifying commentary on the problems of African-American representation across more than a century of

Young Talent award went to Carla Simon, who recently made her feature debut with “Summer 1993,” which won best first film at last year’s Berlin Film Festival.

“For more than a hundred years, universal stories have been told from one perspective only; it’s time to change that cinema,” Variety said.

Influential movie website IndieWire said the movie “packages such weighty and ultra-relevant subjects into the form of a wildly uneven but consistently entertaining night at the movies”.

Packs

The Hollywood Reporter called the film “credulity-straining” but said it packs a punch nevertheless.

“Lee crosses the line between seriousness and near-slapstick countless times as he sinks his teeth into this ripe opportunity to chew on and spit out the KKK and all it stands for once and for all,” he said.

The Guardian gave it three out of five stars saying the movie “responds fiercely, contemptuously to the crassness at the heart of the Trump regime and gleefully pays it back in its own coin”.

“BlacKkKlansman” marks Lee’s first outing at Cannes since 1991’s “Jungle Fever”.

He wore a black beret to the premiere attended by stars including veteran actress Jane Fonda, supermodel Naomi Campbell and Cannes jury president Cate Blanchett.

As he basked in a six-minute-long standing ovation, Lee flashed the “Love” and “Hate” knuckle-dusters worn by Radio Raheem in his 1989 hit “Do the Right Thing” at the cameras.

The astonishing true story of one of the riskiest undercover investigations in American history — an improbable early-’70s case in which black police detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) applied for and was ultimately granted membership in the Ku Klux Klan — Lee’s latest is as much a compelling black empowerment story as it is an electrifying commentary on the problems of African-American representation across more than a century of cinema.

Backed by Blumhouse and “Get Out” auteur Jordan Peele, “BlacKkKlansman” is also the best thing the director has made in a dozen

because we all have universal stories to tell,” said Jenkins, who told Variety that “Wonder Woman 2” will start shooting “shockingly soon.”

Earlier that evening, Jenkins addressed the under-representation of women in Cannes’ competition. “I don’t want to start pointing years (since HBO miniseries “When the Levees Broke”) and a welcome throwback to the days when Lee’s movies struck a nerve in the cultural conversation. Call it “How Spike Got His Groove Back,” and don’t be surprised if the movie — which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival — proves to be one of the summer’s breakout hits, assuming Sundance sensations “Sorry to Bother You” and “Blindspotting” don’t exhaust the appetite for more contemporary black-lives-matter bombshells.

Opening with one of the most recognizable scenes from “Gone With the Wind” — that of Scarlett O’Hara stumbling through a train station filled with wounded Confederate soldiers — and building to a galvanizing four-minute montage of recent events that show how racism is alive and well in our country, “BlacKkKlansman” feels like Lee’s “Don’t just complain about it, do something” answer to the lack of stories featuring African-American leads today. Lee was an outspoken critic of Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” slamming the director’s excessive use of the N-word (which features about four dozen times here), and his movie feels like a different kind of anti-racism revenge saga — one that is plenty stylized but based in reality and could reasonably be considered a positive example.

Presented as a kind of real-life Shaft, Ron Stallworth serves as a role model for audiences starved for black heroes on-screen: an activist who infiltrated not just the Klan but also the corrupt, racist system that was the Colorado Springs Police Department at the time, using his position to bring the organization out of the Dark Ages. Incidentally, “the Organization” is also what the Colorado Springs KKK branch calls itself, although this group of semiliterate rednecks seem anything but organized: At times, their amateur hate club comes across so inept that the movie veers into outright comedy, even if Lee insists that he was shooting for something more serious.

fingers because it’s a systematic (issue),” said the helmer, whose credits spans from the Oscar-winning feature “Monster” to “The Killing” and “Wonder Woman.” (RTRS)

BRUSSELS:

Belgian comic book artist William Vance, whose action adventure series XIII was popular in the Frenchspeaking world, died late Monday, his publisher announced.

“My friend the artist William Vance died this evening,” Yves Schlirf, editorial director at Dargaud Benelux, tweeted. “I will really miss you my old lion.”

Vance, the pen name of William Van Cutsem, was born in the Brussels region and drew for the Tintin series before striking it big with XIII, a contemporary action adventure series.

Media accounts said the bespectacled and mustachioed Vance was 82 years old and was suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

The Belgian news outlet L’Echo said Vance, who also produced Bob Morane and Bruno Brazil, was “one of the last masters of Belgian comic strips.”

Parkinson’s disease forced him to abandon XIII in 2010 after he created it with script writer Jean Van Hamme in 1984, L’Echo said.

He launched his career by drawing for Tintin, translated into English and other languages, in the 1960s. In 1967, he worked with Gerald Forton to sketch Bob Morane. (AFP)