It’s that time of year. I’ll counting down my top twelve films of the year daily on the blog between now and New Year. I’ll also be discussing my top ten on the Scannain podcast. This is number nine.
At its core, BlacKkKlansman is a story about the power of stories. In particular, the power of cinema.
This is no real surprise. Spike Lee is an avowed cinephile with an incredible hunger and passion for the medium. Lee knows the history of cinema, and understands the historical context of cinema. BlacKkKlansman is alternately a loving homage to blaxploitation and a discussion of blaxploitation. It is a film that is fundamentally about the way in which the stories that people tell influence and shape the world in which they live.
At the heart of BlacKkKlansman is a sequence in which real-life Civil Rights icon Harry Belafonte plays a fictionalised activist. He recounts, in gory detail, the story of a horrific lynching that he witnessed as a child. He contextualises this attack by reference to the success of Birth of a Nation, which he describes using the (anachronistic) term “blockbuster.” This sequence is intercut with the induction of new members into the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan, while gleefully rewatching (and cheering) Birth of a Nation.
The most interesting idea within BlacKkKlansman is the implication that it might be possible to counter-programme this. If narratives of hatred and violence can be perpetuated through cinema, then perhaps stories about collaboration and empathy can also be spread in that manner. Clever and self-aware, BlacKkKlansman feels like an attempt to construct one such narrative.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: blackkklansman, ideas, metafiction, racism, Spike Lee | Leave a comment »
