BLOGGER ARCHIVE - MONTHLY FILM SERIES
DECEMBER 2024 - Spike Lee
MONTHLY FILM SERIES: Spike Lee
DECEMBER 2024
I’m ending this month a bit early for the holiday season; also so I can focus on watching Christmas movies.
Spike Lee has been such an interesting director to focus on for a month. I don’t really know if I learned much more about him than I already knew. Spike obviously cares about race and telling stories that highlight black American experiences. He elevates famous actors such as Denzel, Lindo and Turturro. I didn’t realize how great Delroy Lindo was before this marathon; and he has become a favorite character actor of mine going forward (also maybe the greatest showbiz name?). Spike has many different trademarks that he uses in his films that in his later films he references as almost a wink to the audience. He uses a variety of camera angles and postions to help tell his stories including Dutch angles and dolly shots. I’m pretty sure at least 80% of the movies I watched this month included at least one of these methods. He also likes character testimonials in which actors break the fourth wall and speak diretly to the camera. Possibly the best one of these I saw was a monologue after Delroy Lindo’s character Paul goes rouge in the jungle in Da 5 Bloods (2020). This movie was not my most favorite of the 8 or so movies I watched this month; but scenes like this put it in the conversation. Spike likes uses of vibrant color and specifically uses them within the backdrop of Manhattan and Brooklyn in vibrant communities. He’s interested in urban diveristy and how so many subcultures are able to live in one place; peacefully or not. This is evident in film works such as Do the Right Thing (1989), 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006) and more. Spike is interested in love and the common contemproary struggle of finacial issues on such relationships. Suprisingly besides Do the Right Thing (1989), my favorite movie of the month was one I had never heard about before; Clockers (1995). Its a story about a young man who gets in trouble with the police after his connections in the illegal drug industry in NYC leads to a young man’s death. Keitel and Turturro are such a fantastic cop duo in this one and Keitel in particular brings such a gritty New York styling to it. What a legend. This film maintains the viewing tension through not revealing to the audience who commited the murder. We, like the police, must speculate based on what is revealed to us and make guesses. In the end, a straight-laced, job-having, family-supporting chraracter is revealed to have done the crime compared to the near-obvious, drug-dealing, child-indoctrinating, gang-banging character that we likely all suspected (and was also the protagonist). This was such an effective choice because it leads us as an audience to question why we made that judgment in the first place. Did we judge this person based on his race? His reputation? His affiliates? In the end, I’m sure many of us were wrong. I was not suspecting much from Clockers (1995), but it crept up on me in a big way. I forgot to mention that Delroy Lindo was the drug-dealing community patriarch that becomes a terrifying antagonist. The film overall relveals how easy it is for people from this background to fall into these traps while they’re coming up.
I wonder if we can put Spike and Denzel up there with the all-time best director-actor duos. Whilst understandably long (we know how I feel about this- (and in case you don’t it basically boils down to: wouldn’t it be the ultimate demonstration of a director’s craft to create something short and concise?)) Malcolm X was an epic work. By the end, you really feel the exhaution felt by this man and what he had to sacrifice in regards to his family and eventually his own life. If you asked me who my favorite actor was today I would tell you Denzel Washington, becuase he brings such an incredible unique energy to his roles. I remember, when Gladiator II came out, people got angry with it because Denzel was speaking in his Americanized Denzel cadence which was not historically accurate (amoung other things that angered them). How could anyone ever be upset with Denzel bringing this energy to a role; especially to a character that this energy fit into so perfectly; a coniving power-hungry poltiician! Its so perfect how could you possibly be mad at it?! Anyway- what I like about this role is that Denzel actually does the opposite and tries to do his best impression of a method actor. Despite bits of this Denzel energy shining through, he becomes X and we’re all better off for having experieced it imo.
Overall, this month was very entertaining and Spike is a very effective director. I really enjoyed learning more about his style and its influence on American cinema.
