Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, a pro-law and order and anti-terrorism tract, is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, a black Colorado Springs cop who figured out a novel way of infiltrating the Klan in the early 1970s. As is his wont, Lee immediately begins by mingling straightforward polemics with emphatic artistry. We begin on the famous Gone with the Wind crane shot, unaltered by Lee, before moving to a diegetic slide presentation by a racist (Alec Baldwin) that fixes that Klan’s point of view in a historical and cultural context.
Throughout the film, Lee (who co-wrote the screenplay with David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, and Kevin Willmott) breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the now. These moments are jarring and are meant to be jarring. BlacKkKlansman is a kind of essay in narrative that predictably perceives a continuity of circumstance between past and present. Yet it resists platitudes and easy moralizing. It may be Lee’s most contemplative non-documentary film.
Stallworth (John David Washington) is the first black officer on the Colorado Springs department. Before gaining any real experience, he finds himself being put to use in the Criminal Investigations Division as an undercover sent in to collect intel at a Stokely Carmichael speech. Carmichael’s speech and the crowd’s reaction are depicted with expressionistic zest, focusing on faces in the crowd as much as the words of the speaker, who encourages the blacks of Colorado Springs to fight back against their oppressors. Stallworth, who we’ve already learned is a proud man who takes absolutely no shit, seems moved by Carmichael even as Stallworth is there in his capacity as an undercover “pig.”
Stallworth’s dual allegiances — pride as a black man and pride in his job — is not dumped on us over and over but rather is simply set forth at the outset as a necessary tension. Lee accepts Stallworth’s double-consciousness, the Du Boisian term that is explicitly debated later in the film, without suggesting he must choose a “side.” In fact, the film seems to be nostalgic for a time when law enforcement was more pro-active in its disruption of hate groups. Stallworth is on the right side by being on both sides.
BlacKkKlansman works its magic beautifully in its first half, where the nuts and bolts of the operation are as fascinating as they are absurd. Often we move from a laugh-out-loud moment of ridiculousness to a sobering reminder of just how sick the Klan is. Sometimes these moments are one in the same, as when a particularly simpleminded Klansman childishly asks if he can touch a live C-4 explosive. One hundred percent of the comedy is making virulent racism look silly, with near constant dunking on the Klan members.
On a whim, Ron phones the local KKK chapter after noticing an ad in the newspaper that suggests they’re organizing locally. The inexperienced rookie unwittingly uses his real name on the phone call in which he uses his voice skills to “pass” as a racist white man interested in Klan membership. When it dawns on him that a black officer will have a difficult time blending in at a Klan meeting, the CID task force determines that Detective “Flip” Zimmerman (Adam Driver) will be the one to go in, while Stallworth will handle the over-the-phone stuff. Interestingly, many of the white cops are portrayed as accepting of Stallworth, joshing him only for being a naive rookie and not for his race; although other cops on the force are clearly hateful, referring to black suspects as “toads” if not worse.
The police, the film seems to argue, are imperfect and set in their ways (particularly in how they shelter and protect bad officers), but are integral to disrupting terrorism. Stallworth and his task force use cleverness and audacity and a lot of luck to infiltrate the Klan. The most interesting relationship in the film is not the romantic entanglement between Ron and a young anti-racist organizer named Patrice (Laura Harrier) but the relationship between Washington and Driver. It is revealed that Flip is Jewish, which, as Ron admonishes him, gives him “Skin in the game.” In the same way Ron’s elocution skills allow him to pass for white over the phone, Flip’s estrangement from his Jewishness has allowed him to coast as an officer without thinking much about the kind of hate the undercover operation has now ensconced him in.
When it becomes clear the local Klan chapter is planning a terrorist attack upon local black activists, Stallworth and his men must scramble to thwart the attack. All the while, Stallworth has also had a phone relationship with none other than David Duke, who is played with exquisite clownishness by Topher Grace. Grace never goes over the top but gives Duke a kind of pencil-neck aplomb that amounts to as perfect a lampooning of racism I can recall in a motion picture. “You’re darned tootin’,” Duke says over the phone, as if he were some sort of even more reprehensible version of Jerry Lundegaard.
As Stallworth carries on his telephonic friendship with Duke, he finds that the former “Grand Wizard” has dubbed himself the “National Director” of the Klan to make himself seem more mainstream. A key plot point has to do with Driver’s undercover “white Ron Stallworth” waiting to receive his Klan membership card in the mail. The members, hilariously, are sticklers for this. One must have his membership card in hand before one may participate in cross burnings and the like. The real, black Ron makes a call to the clueless Duke, who helpfully expedites the card’s arrival. We realize then that the Klan’s entire bureaucracy consists only of the sad little man Duke sitting in his office. “I can always tell a white man’s voice from a black man’s” Duke says. It could be a Mel Brooks sketch.
Ironically, the closer BlacKkKlansman gets to its violent climax the less riveting it becomes. The first half, in which the logistics and subterfuge of Stallworth’s operation is laid out in detail, is as watchable as any stretch of film I’ve seen this year. Lee’s film leans into serious points about what real lawlessness looks like and what its consequences are. The moments in which Lee explicitly connects the narrative to contemporary concerns are at once seemingly unnecessary and, well, quintessentially Spike Lee. It’s difficult to blame a veteran filmmaker for being himself.
BlacKkKlansman‘s coda includes footage of last year’s Charlottesville riots, in which a white anti-racism activist, Heather Heyer, was killed. The film is, in effect, dedicated to her. Footage of David Duke, filmed around the same time, sees the man himself endorsing Trump, and in doing so, providing the most forceful rebuke possible to the idea that Spike Lee sometimes lays it on too thick.
BlacKkKlansman — FOUR STARS
Directed by Spike Lee
Rated R
Focus Features
135 min.
Lewis On Film 