BlacKkKlansman (2018)

My parents felt that Spike Lee's first non-honorary Oscar was a long time coming and thus were glad when he got one for Best Adapted Screenplay for this. It sounded like they wouldn't have been surprised if he'd gotten more for it. The film certainly has received a lot of awards at other ceremonies. So I had to check it out, albeit with a little trepidation.

In 1972 Colorado Springs, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, son of Denzel) dares to take an invitation to become the first local Black policeman. When he sees an ad for the Ku Klux Klan, he calls on a whim and, sounding naturally "White" enough, arranges a meeting to join it. Not looking nearly as White as he sounds, he persuades vaguely similar-sounding co-worker Philip "Flip" Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to go in his stead. With a little help from others on the force, they monitor just how much of a threat this Klan chapter is.

For the most part, the '70s Klansmen appear pretty much the way we might expect them to today: more concerned with making their presence known with parades and cross burnings than lynchings. Of course, if that were the worst they did, this wouldn't be much of a story. There are a few particularly unhinged members eager to launch a lethal salvo to kick off an "inevitable" race war. Most prominent of these is Felix (Jasper Pääkkönen), who also remains the most suspicious of their new recruit.

On that, I have to say, this movie almost shoots itself in the foot. Flip has to do a lot more of the espionage, posing (up to the white gown), and general self-endangerment than Ron does, so who's the main "Klansman" here? As his surname implies, Flip is of Jewish stock, however nonreligiously, and therefore is about equally an enemy of the Klan. Between turmoil and acting within acting, I can see how Driver was the one actor herein to get nominated for an Academy Award.

To Ron's surprise and delight, Grand Wizard/National Director David Duke (Topher Grace) himself comes into play, albeit not in the precise violent plot. He mostly talks on the phone with Ron but pays the town a visit in the third act. It's rather creepy how charismatic he can be in spite of his toxicity. The real Duke was not amused by this portrayal.

Speaking of amusement, you may have picked up on elements that seem comedic. After all, one poster shows a hooded Klansman holding an Afro pick against a blank background. Lee himself thought it had the makings of a Dave Chappelle sketch until he heard about the basis in fact, and even then he wanted to throw in some comic relief. What we get is not exactly over-the-top humor, but characters often have trouble stifling their snickers, and it's not hard to tell why.

Make no mistake: This is not a comedy-drama. The serious parts very much overwhelm the funny parts. We don't see a whole lot of violence, but the R rating is not just for profanity; we hear details about some grisly incidents, including possibly the worst murder of the last century. Even putting those moments aside, you're liable to cringe just from listening to the White supremacist rhetoric for so long. We also see several clips from The Birth of a Nation, which reaffirm that I was right not to watch it even for its centennial.

Furthermore, while the efforts of Ron and company are basically victorious, BK, like so many other Lee joints, does not end on a happy note. After a dark moment for Ron, it jumps to footage from 2017 events, implying that not much has changed. The last image is an inverted U.S. flag that fades in color. I half-expected no music over the credits.

This points to one thing that bugs me about Lee: When he goes into the subject of race, he gets more unsubtly livid than any other director who comes to mind. And hanging around angry people, whether in person or on a screen, will make me comparably angry and/or uncomfortable enough to want to go elsewhere.

This is not to say that Lee exercises no restraint. It's nice to see several good White cops in play, with just a touch of nuance, not least with regard to Chief Bridges (Robert John Burke), who tries to make Ron feel welcome but claims less control of the tense situation than Ron would like. Boots Riley actually complained that Lee was being too cop-friendly. It's worth noting that thanks to his choice of profession, Ron faces about as much trouble from some of the Black community as from some of the police force. In particular, he and activist Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier) grow fond of each other but never agree on whether it makes sense to take the civil rights struggle within the system. And when Ron hears Kwame Ture/Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins) use firebrand language, he doesn't like it as much as the rest of the crowd.

Beyond that, I'm just not crazy about Lee from an artistic standpoint. He hasn't changed much since Malcolm X, which also had uneven pacing, occasionally disjointed audio, and other awkwardness. He should probably ditch his signature of having characters glide along on an unseen moving platform; it's more jarring than cool.

I should mention some of the key ways this adaptation, for all its honor, deviates from history. For some reason, it set things seven years earlier. We know exceedingly little about Ron's real stand-in, who might not have been remotely Jewish. Patrice never existed, which may explain why she's too obsessed to show much depth. The climax, if not the third act in general, is extremely dramatized, borrowing from an unrelated case. Now, I'm not going to complain about all these cinematic liberties, or I'd be a hypocrite for liking Bohemian Rhapsody. But there is one major introduced problem that many viewers before me have noted: If the Klan is so secretive that members call it "the Organization" even in total privacy, then why did they advertise with their real name in the frigging newspaper?

Of the six 2018 Best Picture nominees I've seen, BK comes in fourth in my book. There's a fair chance it'll remain there if I ever finish the eight. It's not everything I hoped for, but I don't feel robbed.