4.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, highly disturbing and violent images, sexual candor, racial epithets and profanity
By Derrick Bang
This is another one for the jaw-dropping Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction file: an audacious adaptation of a real-world event that simply wouldn’t be believed, had it not actually happened.
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| Detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver, left) stares in astonishment at the KKK membership card that his police colleague Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) has just received in the mail, after he politely asked — during a phone conversation, in the guise of a dedicated white racist — that KKK Grand Wizard David Duke expedite the request. |
Granted, director Spike Lee and his co-scripting colleagues — Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott — have taken liberties here and there: changing some names, fabricating a few supporting characters, adjusting the time frame a bit. But the key details are just as they’re depicted in Ron Stallworth’s 2014 memoir of the same title, and the succinct elevator pitch can’t help raising eyebrows: the astonishing saga of how a black Colorado Springs police officer became a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan.
But that isn’t the only selling point of Lee’s big-screen adaptation. He has shrewdly shaped BlacKkKlansman to make what went down in the 1970s sound like a foreshadowing of what’s happening right now. Occasional lines of dialogue leap off the screen, as echoes of today’s headlines.
A casual conversation partway through this film, during which Stallworth (John David Washington) smugly discounts any possibility of KKK Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) gaining traction on his desire to occupy the White House — Duke being described in contemptuous (but wholly accurate) terms that are equally relevant to the current racist Pretender-in-Chief — can’t help raising goose bumps.
At other times, in a neck-snapping shift of tone, Lee’s film is riotously hilarious … although our laughter tends to be nervous, at best.
That’s quite a balancing act: fascinating history, provocative social commentary, unexpected humor, and a terrifying glimpse of humanity at its worst. BlacKkKlansman triumphs on all those levels: alternating dynamic verve and swagger, with victory and heartbreak. It’s by far the most urgently relevant, shrewdly insightful and entertaining film of Lee’s remarkable career: quite an accomplishment, given his already impressive résumé.
It’s the early 1970s: Fresh-faced, Afro-coifed Stallworth becomes the first black officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department. It’s an early stab at racial integration that Chief Bridge (Robert John Burke) warns will test his new hire’s patience and resolve at every turn. And not just from an unknown percentage of local residents, but also from fellow cops such as the loutish Andy Landers (Frederick Weller, doing a great job at being teeth-grindingly loathsome).
Washington deftly establishes Stallworth’s character during this initial interview: calm, patient, insightful and — more than anything else — dignified. But he doesn’t wear the latter arrogantly, like a shield; resolve and a desire for mutual respect just sorta radiate from him. Yet when alone or briefly out of view, repressed frustration erupts like lava: quite jarring, the first time, given the Zen-like tranquility he has displayed up to that moment.
Stallworth’s probationary banishment to the records department concludes when Bridge needs him for a special assignment: to infiltrate an event hosted by Colorado College’s Black Student Union, and determine whether a speech given by former Black Panther Party leader Stokely Carmichael — who has re-christened himself Kwame Ture — gets the listeners “riled up.”
Actor Corey Hawkins’ delivery may not have the oratorical intensity for which Ture was known, but it doesn’t miss by much. It’s an electrifying sequence made even more powerful by cinematographer Chayse Irvin’s captivating close-ups of the crowd, with individual faces slowly sliding past, moving forward and backward toward the camera. Palpable cinematic energy.
(Also a fascinating contrast to the film’s prologue, which depicts a polished, three-piece-suited white racist — a cameo by Alec Baldwin — practicing a speech of his own.)
The core plotline begins shortly thereafter, once Stallworth is assigned to the station’s intelligence department; one of his routine duties is paging through newspapers, to see if anything bears closer scrutiny. A classified ad for the KKK catches his attention; on impulse, he calls the phone number and — shifting his dialectical cadence to “educated white” — leaves a message in the guise of a clearly intelligent racist aggrieved by the “current state of race relations.”
Unfortunately, Stallworth makes the rookie mistake of using his actual name, rather than an undercover alias: a judgmental lapse that’ll come back to haunt him.
His call is returned almost immediately by Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold), leader of the local KKK chapter. Stallworth holds his own; Breachway, intrigued, encourages a meeting.
Stallworth, realizing he can’t show up in person, recruits undercover officer Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), who — with the blessing of station Sergeant Trapp (Ken Garito) — subsequently becomes the “public face” of Ron Stallworth. With fellow plain-clothes detective Jimmy Creek (Michael Buscemi) also in tow, the real Stallworth suddenly leads his own surveillance operation.
And an incredibly scary one, at that. Moving forward, Zimmerman must memorize and be able to embellish everything that Stallworth says on the phone — not merely to Breachway, but on up the KKK food chain — while Stallworth must be similarly well-versed with everything that takes place during Zimmerman’s increasingly intimate contact with the KKK chapter members. On top of which, Stallworth and Zimmerman must work on sounding similar, to ensure that they’re regarded as “one person” at all times.
Breathtaking to watch. Astonishing to imagine that it actually happened.
These KKK adversaries are condensed into four primary characters, starting with Eggold’s calm, reasonably intelligent but appropriately cautious handling of Breachway. Jasper Pääkkönen’s Felix Kendrickson, on the other hand, is flat-out scary: a twitchy, suspicious sociopath who doesn’t trust “Stallworth” for a moment. At a different end of the spectrum, Paul Walter Hauser — so memorable as the numb-nuts “fixer” in I, Tonya— is impressively pathetic as the dumb-as-dirt, eternally drunk Ivanhoe.
But they all pale alongside Ashlie Atkinson’s cheerfully horrifying depiction of Felix’s wife, Connie: a woman who giggles with enthusiastic anticipation over the possibility that, one day, she might be allowed to “do her part” for the cause. And who eagerly embraces an eventual opportunity to participate in mass murder, with the giddy delight of a little girl being allowed to help her mother bake cookies.
Laura Harrier is engaging as Patrice Dumas, activist head of the Black Student Union, with whom Stallworth begins a cautious — but quite unlikely — relationship. On the one hand, she’s the sole (wholly fictitious) character who feels contrived; on the other, her presence allows for spirited debates that challenge Stallworth’s core beliefs, and force him outside his philosophical comfort zone.
Topher Grace’s earnestly deadpan depiction of David Duke is both unnerving and riotous, the latter for the way this film’s script repeatedly mocks him. And yet we never lose track of how evil and dangerous he is, particularly — another eye-blink moment — with his frequent use of the phrases “America first” and “Make American great again.” (And where have we heard those, more recently?)
In something of a surprise, Driver’s Zimmerman undergoes the most thoughtful and striking character growth, which develops with wholly persuasive credibility. Zimmerman initially embraces the impersonation as a routine part of the job, unable to understand Stallworth’s passion. But sharing space with virulent racists makes it personal, and prompts Zimmerman to reassess the estranged relationship with his own Jewish heritage.
We watch the transition take shape in Driver’s gaze, as Zimmerman finds it increasingly difficult to play-act such corrosive, irrational displays of race hatred.
In a film laden with powerful moments, none comes close to a sequence that begins when the visiting Duke hosts a screening of D.W. Griffith’s notorious 1915 epic, Birth of a Nation: The Colorado Springs KKK members (and their wives) cheer the worst, and most racist, sequences, while “Stallworth” (Zimmerman) watches in sickened silence.
Lee cross-cuts, ever more rapidly, with a similar gathering across town, at the Black Student Union: A visiting, aging activist (the quietly regal Harry Belafonte), recalls witnessing the 1916 lynching of teenage Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas, along with — just when you think the story itself can’t get worse — the notorious Fred Gildersleeve photos that later were sold as postcards.
And this isn’t even the film’s climax. That arrives shortly thereafter, during a heart-in-mouth sequence that — I swear — left my fellow theatergoers unable to breathe, until it concluded.
Production values are superb, the era lovingly re-created via clothing, hairstyles and pop-culture references to then-popular blaxploitation films (the style of which Lee and Irvin imitate, at one telling point). Jazz trumpeter/composer Terence Blanchard’s unsettling score is punctuated by well-placed radio classics such as “Oh Happy Day,” “Brandy,” “Ball of Confusion” and Prince’s cover of “Mary Don’t You Weep.”
Lee’s earliest films suffered from a tendency to preach: to stridently tellviewers how they should think and react. BlacKkKlansman demonstrates the degree to which he has matured, content now to tell a story — leaving passion to the film’s characters, rather than as part of an intrusive directorial voice — and let viewers make up their own minds.
You won’t quickly forget this one.
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