Butler's Cinema Scene

“BLACKkKLANSMAN” My rating: B-

145 minutes | MPAA rating: R

As confirmed by the six-minute standing ovation it received at May’s Cannes International Film Festival, Spike Lee’s “BlackKKlansman” is the right movie at the right time.

The film so effectively punches certain cultural hot buttons, so taps into the current political zeitgeist that it takes an hour of its 145-minute running time to realize that as drama it’s pretty weak stuff.

Based on the real story of Ron Stallworth, a black police detective in Colorado Springs who in the late ’70s infiltrated and even joined the Ku Klux Klan, the film is an uneasy melding of suspense, liberal uplift and  satire in which every element — performances, writing, pacing — is subservient to the delivery of a political message.

I’m down with that message. The film opens with a 50s-era “educational” film in which a eugenicist (Alec Baldwin) rants against the threat posed by race mingling. It closes with news footage of neo-Nazis marching last year in Charlottesville VA (and President Trump giving them a pass).

Even so, the movie (Lee co-wrote the screenplay with Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz  and K.U. teacher and filmmaker Kevin Willmott) is notably heavy handed. Yeah, today’s audiences haven’t much use for subtlety, but even so…

We encounter Stallworth (John David Washington…Denzel’s son) when he applies to become the first black officer on the Colorado Springs force.  He’s warned by the Chief (Robert John Burke) that he’ll have to have a Jackie Robinson-level of tolerance for abuse.  It’ll come at him not just from the public but from  his fellow officers.

But Stallworth is ambitious. So when Civil Rights activist Stokely Carmichael is booked to address African American students at a local college,  the department’s sole black cop jumps at the chance to go undercover. He’s assigned to attend the rally and report back on Carmichael’s speech (the activist was long a target of Hoover’s FBI).

The fallout from the event is considerable.

First, Stallworth exhibits his value as a plainclothes officer, leading to his elevation to the rank of detective.

Second, he meets and eventually falls for Patrice (Laura Harrier), the student activist who organized the event — although it will be some time before he confesses that he’s one of the “pigs” she so despises.

Third, he finds himself unexpectedly inspired by Carmichael (Corey Hawkins), whose message of black pride/power hits hard. But did Lee really have to punctuate this scene with artsy montages of young black faces transformed by the speech? Aren’t Carmichael’s words powerful enough?

Adam Driver, John David Washington

Going through the local newspaper, the new detective discovers a recruitment ad for the Ku Klux Klan. Out of curiosity he dials the number and using his best suburban white guy voice tells the fellow at the other end of the line that he hates blacks, Jews and  immigrants. Soon  he’s invited to a face-to-face meeting.

That’s out of the question. So another officer, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), is assigned to attend Klan get-togethers posing as Stallworth.  That Zimmerman is Jewish only makes the deception more satisfying.

Many of the Klan members are absolute boobs, like the fat, hapless Ivanhoe (Paul Walter Hauser, so hilariously effective as one of the bumbling Kerrigan bashers in last year’s excellent “I, Tonya”). But Flip must be particularly careful with the suspicious and violence-prone  Felix Kendrickson (Jasper Paakkonen, a Finnish film star who is more than believable as a good ol’ boy racist).

At a certain point in the investigation Stallworth actually phones Klan national leader David Duke (Topher Grace), who prides himself on his ability to spot a black man simply by listening to him speak a few words. Duke says it’s obvious that Stallworth, who will soon receive his official Klan membership card, is a clear-headed, intellectual, well-spoken white man.

“BlackkKlansman” shifts into action film cliches in the later going, when Stallworth and Zimmerman must foil a racist bomb plot against Patrice and a guest lecturer (Harry Belafonte) who relates to students how his childhood friend was lynched by an angry white mob.

Yeah…not subtle.

From a purely dramatic point of view, “BlackkKlansman” has no center.  Washington is an attractive screen presence and has a commanding voice, but he never really gets a handle on Stallworth’s character. (For instance, is the black cop conflicted at being a tool of the establishment by spying on Carmichael? Dunno.)

Driver is fine as Zimmerman, but mostly he’s playing a man who’s playing a character…he’s got no particular personality. Nor do the other members (Michael Buscemi, Ken Garito) of the team. Harrier’s Patrice feel and acts like a screenwriter’s useful mouthpiece.

Ironically, this means that the Klansmen are the most interesting personalities in sight.

As director, Lee takes a middle road.  The film is neither fully dramatic or fully comedic.  It never tires of mocking the ignorance of the racist mind, but only at the risk of making them seem harmless buffoons.

But at key moments the filmmakers’ anger boils up and then, at least, “BlackkKlansman” becomes a work of passion.

| Robert W. Butler