dir. by Spike Lee
written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmot, and Spike Lee
For a good while now, Spike Lee has balanced his for-hire work with much more idiosyncratic projects, every Oldboy remake or NBA 2K story mode balanced with oddities like a Chicago-set adaptation of an ancient Greek play, or a story about a man cursed with a thirst for blood. Given that recent history, BlacKkKlansman is one of his more straightforward premises, a biopic based on a particularly strange piece of history, with a lot of work already done by the premise. On the other hand, the film comes as not only Lee's first Palme d'Or competitor since 1991's Jungle Fever, but also as the winner of the second-place Grand Prix at that same festival.
Indeed, it's the relative accessibility of the film which is its greatest strength. Here, Lee has crafted a funny, tense crowd-pleaser while intertwining pointed social commentary into the humour and narrative, and the result is a film which is equally thoughtful and entertaining. The film is professional and straightforward without being mindless, and at the same time it's intelligent and righteous without being self-indulgent... well, mostly. Come for the crazy premise, stay for the sharp critique of American institutional racism.
