美国国家公共电台 NPR Spike Lee Checks Under The Hood In The Blistering 'BlacKkKlansman'

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AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Spike¹ Lee's new movie "BlacKkKlansman" is, believe it or not, based on a true story. It's about an African-American police officer who in the 1970s went undercover to infiltrate² the Ku Klux Klan by joining it. Critic Bob Mondello says the film is both funny and pointed³.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE⁴: Colorado Springs is about to hire a new police officer. His name - Ron Stallworth.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

ISIAH WHITLOCK JR.: (As Mr. Turrentine) There's never been a black cop in this city. We think you might be the man to open things up around here.

MONDELLO: Open things up he does. Looking through a newspaper at his desk, he sees a Ku Klux Klan recruitment ad. There's a phone number, so he calls it.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) This is Ron Stallworth calling. Who am I speaking with?

TOPHER GRACE: (As David Duke) This is David Duke.

WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) Grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan - that David Duke?

GRACE: (As David Duke) Last time I checked. What can I do you for?

WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) Well, since you asked, I hate blacks. I hate Jews, Mexicans and Irish.

MONDELLO: Every head in the precinct has now turned to watch Ron.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) But my mouth to God's ears, I really hate those black rats and anyone else really that doesn't have pure white Aryan blood running through their veins⁵.

GRACE: (As David Duke) I'm happy to be talking to a true white American.

WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) God bless white America.

MONDELLO: As the camera lingers on the faces of the white policemen, director Spike Lee gets the laugh he's looking for - not the first and certainly not the last since Stallworth, played by John David Washington, is quickly invited to a meeting of the Klan's local chapter, which presents an obvious problem.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) We need a white officer to play me when they meet face to face.

ROBERT JOHN BURKE: (As Chief Bridges) Can you do that?

WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) With the right white man you can do anything.

MONDELLO: The right white man turns out to be Flip⁶ Zimmerman, played by Adam Driver, who attends the meeting...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

JASPER PAAKKONEN: (As Felix Kendrickson) Are you for the white race, friend?

ADAM DRIVER: (As Flip Zimmerman) Oh, hell, yeah.

MONDELLO: ...And tries to get the lay of the land...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

DRIVER: (As Flip Zimmerman) What kind of stuff do you guys do?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Cross burnings, marches.

MONDELLO: ...Attracting attention in the process.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

PAAKKONEN: (As Felix Kendrickson) You ask too many questions. Are you undercover or something?

MONDELLO: This is not a comic question obviously. There's serious tension in "BlacKkKlansman's" situation, and the film embraces the shifts in mood with shifts in filmmaking style, Lee actually couching his arguments in a kind of shorthand history of Hollywood's treatment of race. He includes scenes from "Gone With The Wind" and "Birth Of A Nation," has characters discuss '70s blaxploitation films and gives his hero a bit of Shaft's swagger. And in grander scenes, he shift gears entirely⁸, sometimes to deliver cathartic⁹ broadsides...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

COREY HAWKINS: (As Stokely Carmichael) We must unite and organize to fight racism¹⁰.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) All power.

MONDELLO: ...Other times to evoke¹¹ a gentler sort of power, as when in this very speech civil rights activist¹² Stokely Carmichael talks of internalizing white standards of beauty and the screen fills with Lee's quietly devastating¹³ response - close-ups of the young black faces looking up at Carmichael, halos of soft light caressing¹⁴ cheekbones. Identity is central to "BlacKkKlansman," and not just black identity. Flip Zimmerman, Ron's partner in the police ruse¹⁵, initially¹⁶ thinks his identity isn't a factor.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

DRIVER: (As Flip Zimmerman) For you it's a crusade. For me it's a job.

MONDELLO: But being Jewish, he has a reckoning of sorts.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKKKLANSMAN")

PAAKKONEN: (As Felix Kendrickson) You're taking this Jew lie detector¹⁷ test.

WASHINGTON: (As Ron Stallworth) They hate you. Doesn't that piss you off? Why are you acting⁷ like you ain't got skin in the game?

MONDELLO: Lee's point of course is that we've all got skin in this game. He may depict¹⁸ '70s Klan members as bozos with hood¹⁹ fetishes - hateful, yes, but amusingly incompetent²⁰. He does that, though, to soften²¹ us up for some harrowing juxtapositions²², chief among them Stallworth's Klan induction²³ intercut with an excruciating recounting of a Klan lynching. Lee uses that look back to setup a head-spinning flash forward to the Trump²⁴ era. There's a reason "BlacKkKlansman" is opening this weekend, one year nearly to the day after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. If hate groups were insidious²⁵ four decades ago, argues Lee in his most ferociously²⁷ entertaining and just plain ferocious²⁶ film in years, how much more dangerous are they today? I'm Bob Mondello.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BALL OF CONFUSION")

THE TEMPTATIONS: (Singing) Segregation²⁸, determination, demonstration²⁹, integration³⁰, aggravation³¹, humiliation³², obligation to my nation. Ball of confusion.