Review: BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee has never been a perfect filmmaker, but it's the imperfections that make his films so riveting and difficult to ignore. His best films are fuelled by an impassioned indignation, a fire and brimstone righteousness and a roll of the eyes-type humour and BlacKkKlansman finds Lee at the full height of his powers.

"Dis joint is based upon some fo' real, fo' real sh*t" declares the opening title card and certainly BlacKkKlansman relays the ridiculously unbelievable but absolutely true story of how a black Colorado Springs police officer successfully infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, even managing to have several phone discussions with the then Grand Wizard himself, David Duke (embodied to supercilious perfection by Topher Grace). Before our main story, a word from our sponsor: starting with the famous crane shot of Scarlett O'Hara wandering amongst the injured and dying Confederate soldiers from Gone with the Wind, it then segueing into a short film featuring Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard (Alec Baldwin) as he stammeringly rants on about the "civil rights assault on our white Protestant values" perpetrated by an international Jewish conspiracy and how we must make America great again. Sound familiar?

In fact, much of what makes BlacKkKlansman so deeply unsettling despite its Seventies blaxploitation swagger is its familiarity. The film may take place in 1979, but precious little has changed as far as race relations in America. It's a point that Lee drives home over and over again, especially in the stunning closing montage that incorporates footage from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a car driven by a young man known to have white supremacist beliefs plowed into a group of peaceful protestors, resulting in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer. It may be a crazy, upside down world we live in today but it's the same as it ever was. Take our protagonist, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, whose vocal cadences are eerily like those of his father Denzel), first seen arriving at the Colorado Springs Police Force. "We've never had a black police officer," he's told by his superiors. "So you'll be the Jackie Robinson of the Colorado Springs police department." It's a burden that Stallworth is willing to bear, establishing one of the underlying themes of the film - people judge you on how you look and how you act when it has little to do with who you are and what you believe.

This duality is not solely embodied by Stallworth who, almost on a whim, calls up the local branch of the KKK and somehow winds up with an appointment to meet with the local members to talk about joining the group. The duality also extends to Detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), a non-practicing Jewish man who suddenly finds himself having to impersonate Stallworth for the face-to-face meet-and-greet. Sharing the same identity, the two do their best to earn the KKK members' trust in order to confirm if the group are indeed planning a violent attack during an upcoming civil rights event.

That Lee manages to combine elements of satire, police drama, and a crime thriller whilst lobbing grenades at the KKK and all its variants and providing viewers with enough socio-political commentary to unpack for years is impressive enough. That he does all that and wraps it up in a commercially appealing package is an astounding achievement. BlacKkKlansman is in a word: electrifying.

BlacKkKlansman

Directed by: Spike Lee

Written by: Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee; based on the memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth

Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Pääkkönen, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Hauser, Ashlie Atkinson, Corey Hawkins, Michael Buscemi, Ken Garito, Robert John Burke, Frederick Weller, Nicholas Turturro, Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin