This funk film grooves you into the life of a black community, showing both their coolness and their struggles against the oppressive white world.
Living in an extremely inhospitable world, where your essential validity has reduced to nothing, the only place where one can feel a semblance of safety is within a community of equally stigmatised and oppressed people, stick with your kind and stand shoulder to shoulder to the endless barrage of hatred and ignominy, because it may be easy to kill one person, but to raze an entire collective is more difficult. Even so, when the entire three-headed monster of the system is out to get you and your kind, it is increasingly difficult to accept that you’re safe within the company of your people.
The fact of the matter is that such a reality persists even today, a person can walk through the city and they’ll have no idea of the instinctive judgement and discrimination that others are thinking about them just because they look different. The problem isn’t fixed, they’ve just hidden it better. I’m trying not to go on a political ramble about how grim our world is, with the ball-and-chain realities that are lying in wait for people who don’t look like what this goddamn culture would have you believe you should look like, but when covering a film like this, such a detour is inevitable. On that bright and freeing Friday afternoon, right after attending my final lecture before the Easter holidays, I watched Do the Right Thing (1989). On two occasions in the past, I’ve watched this film but have always stopped halfway through due to being too stoned out of my mind and falling asleep, no fault of the film just to be crystal clear. So, of relatively sound mind I decided to rewatch the film and ride it all the way through. Treading in the heels of Mookie, a pizza delivery guy, living in a solid black neighbourhood, the film juggles the racial tensions between black, Asian and latin people within this community coupled with the repugnant presence of white police, who end up responsible for the tipping point of this amicable peace later on in the film, as well as his relationship with his girlfriend and son. When you put a premise like this down on paper, it sounds like a really poignant tale of a black man just trying to get by in a hostile world, and it is, but what makes the film so damn delightful is its funky aesthetic. You get the picture of it right at the very start during the opening credits. A whole cavalcade of groovy and cool characters, all of whom have a wonderful presence and give dialogue that goes from witty and hilarious to insightful. It’s a cool black film and no damn wonder it’s such a classic. Showing black people living in their community as what they are, extremely cool, knowing one another and bumping into them for some chit-chat.
Meanwhile you got the Italian in the mix, Sal, who runs a beloved pizzeria with his two sons, one a racist bonehead and the other who’s quite likable at times. Their presence in the film is an interesting one as Sal’s relationship with the black people in the neighbourhood, how it deteriorates from utmost respect and amicability to a paroxysm of hatred, is the nexus of the racism white people have deeply internalised through their lives. They won’t express it openly unless their nerves are really trampled upon.
Alongside the dialogue and costumes, lighting and setting, the films character exudes through the cinematography, cameras sliding into medium shots, canted low and high angles while effortlessly slipping in and out of perspective shots makes for such a lively film. Characters will often be framed against a silhouetted background with stark, colourful lighting, almost as if on a collapsible set. This sort of framing gives the film an indisputable visual authenticity which matches the story of black people Spike Lee is telling.
The films tone takes a complete 180 during the last 20 or so minutes, which doesn’t at all feel aberrant. It’s a reminder that it only takes one external, violent, out of order act to wreck the cosy feeling of homeliness that everyone has been building over the years they’ve lived there. This captivatingly charming film is most certainly worth a watch, not only by virtue of its filmic language but the tongue it speaks to us in.
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