If you read my article on Coco from earlier this year, you’ll know that that and La La Land were the only movies I’d ever seen twice in cinemas. Well, BlacKkKlansman can now be added to that list, a film which, on both viewings, made me laugh, cry, feel sick in some places and filled me with joy in others. What I hadn’t appreciated watching it for the first time is how expertly crafted it is, and my second viewing confirmed to me that this might just be my favourite film based on (as the film itself puts it) “some fo’ real, fo’ real sh*t”.
After one of the finest scene setting openings in recent memory (featuring a hilarious turn from Alec Baldwin), the film quickly shows us how well made it’s going to be, with protagonist Ron Stallworth applying to become the first black cop at the Colorado Springs Police Department. It’s a conversation that develops a rhythm with how it’s edited and performed, making the pauses a lot more noticeable than they would’ve been otherwise, also giving us key information about Stallworth’s character, resulting in a simple scene of dialogue becoming an exciting piece of film-making, and this is only five minutes in!
It also highlights how different this movie feels when compared to other true story films. Most retellings of real events just tell the story through the medium of film, which works well, but BlacKkKlansman’s story lends itself to more than just a basic look at what occurred. The events in question follow Ron as an undercover cop who decides to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan with him handling the phone calls and colleague Flip Zimmerman meeting them in person.
The film’s central theme is that of duality, the most obvious being between love and hate, presented via a black student union that Ron gets involved with and the Klan itself. The KKK are especially bolstered by this idea, with the film showing the silly side to the group but using some of the scenes of the union to make the harrowing moments all that more harrowing. There’s more examples of this duality, but it goes to show how thematically rich this story was made to evolve it as a film.
And the film-making has a lot more cinematic energy to it than your average true story, with some quirky editing making basic scenes a lot more interesting, a terrific soundtrack that elevates what’s happening on the screen to a higher level, and as the film reaches it’s final moments, we get an almost hypnotic hallway shot that beautifully transitions the audience from film to reality.
The final 10 minutes of BlacKkKlansman go from some of the most satisfying scenes in movie history (if you’ve seen the movie and aren’t sure which scene I’m talking about, are-a you sure?) to one of the most haunting, which ties real footage to the story somehow seamlessly.
And because the whole film, through every funny, wonderful, sickening and suspenseful scene has been moving towards a moment so powerful the pitch black silence from the audience leaves it’s own impact, Spike Lee gave me a new reason to love the movies.
The G blog 