Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 15 mins
Director. Spike Lee
Cast. Adam Driver, Ryan Eggold, Topher Grace, Laura Harrier, Jasper Pääkkönen, John David Washington.
After more than three decades in the industry as a celebrated director, it was BlacKkKlansman that finally garnered Spike Lee an Academy Award - the 2019 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Lee, and fellow screenwriters David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel and Gary Willmott, adapted Ron Stallworth's 2014 memoir, Black Klansman. Stallworth was the first black police officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department, who intriguinly infiltrated the local Ku Klux Klan branch in the 1970s.
The tone BlacKkKlansman adopts is truly exceptional. Lee depicts racism as a dichotomy between the absurd and the downright dangerous, juggling the sacred and the profane, and the tragedy and the triumph. Potentially, the director spends too much time establishing the white supremacists as buffoons; the clownish ineptitude of the Klan members sterilising any danger – and thus suspense – they potentially present.
Yet, the film still delivers the unmistakable foul stench of truth. Best exemplified by the film's finale, which shifts the film's narrative to powerful real-life footage from the 2017 Charlottesville 'Unite The Right' Rally, culminating in the murder of the Civil Rights protester, Heather Heyer. This seismic shift serves as a stark epilogue, designed to create a chilling connection between the historical events portrayed in the film and the enduring nature of white supremacist violence (and the disturbing lack of accountability for such events) in the United States today.
In BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee is on top form, producing a film that is both enjoyable and impactful.
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