![]() Lee uses one of Griffith’s signature innovations - parallel editing (also known as crosscutting) - to unravel the deep ugliness of Griffith’s hymn to the heroes of white supremacy. In a sly and stunning tour de force of film-geek dialectics, Mr. Griffith epic that simultaneously spurred the rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan and of cinema as an art form. ![]() The climax involves a screening of “The Birth of a Nation,” the 1915 D.W. The first image in “BlacKkKlansman” is a famous, stirring shot from “Gone With the Wind,” of wounded Confederate soldiers around the Atlanta railroad station under a tattered battle flag. Lee’s frequent and indispensable collaborator.)Īs such, they have always been part of the legacy of American movies too. (The soaring, seething, luxuriant score is by Terence Blanchard, Mr. It’s an alarm clock ringing in the midst of a historical nightmare, and also a symphony, the rare piece of political popular art that works in all three dimensions. And beyond its stranger-than-fiction, somewhat embellished real-life story - the actual Ron Stallworth actually did infiltrate the Klan, and wrote a book about it - “BlacKkKlansman” is a furious, funny, blunt and brilliant confrontation with the truth. It has less to do with the iffy, easy-to-satirize concept of “wokeness” than with the urgent need to see what is right in front of you. Lee’s fans have heard before - remember the last scene in “School Daze”? - though rarely from the mouth of a white character. The sergeant asks, “Why don’t you wake up?” “America would never elect somebody like David Duke president,” he says. The guys he is tracking are potentially dangerous, but also patently ridiculous. Duke and his allies are developing an electoral strategy based on potent, divisive issues like immigration, affirmative action and tax reform that could eventually lead to the White House. That title sounds more respectable than the traditional grand wizard, and Sergeant Trapp (Ken Garito), who supervises the department’s undercover unit, insists that the smooth-talking, telegenic Duke has his sights set on the political mainstream. It’s the early 1970s, and Ron (John David Washington), the first African-American officer hired by the Colorado Springs Police Department, has infiltrated the local Klan chapter and chatted on the phone with David Duke (Topher Grace), the organization’s national director. In the middle of “BlacKkKlansman,” Spike Lee’s new joint - his best nondocumentary feature in more than a decade and one of his greatest - Ron Stallworth and his sergeant have an argument about the future of the Ku Klux Klan.
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