Post by klep on Apr 4, 2016 6:41:29 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/4: Do The Right Thing
I feel like I'm not really qualified to talk about this movie. I have the good fortune to be a middle-class white male from a predominately white suburban environment in a world where that's close to the best thing you can be. I haven't ever experienced the kind of racial tensions that play out in Do The Right Thing, because the circumstances of my life have sheltered me from them - I only know what I see on the news and read online. But that doesn't mean they don't exist, and Spike Lee spins his story in such a way as to drive home what those tensions mean for the people that live with them and how they can flare up in unexpected and tragic ways.
For most of its runtime, Do The Right Thing seems largely like a hangout movie. We spend time with a number of people living and/or working on a single street in Bed-Stuy, drifting between them as they go about their day. We see friendships and enmities that exist for various reasons, and while racial animus is present in the community (infamously in a montage where people of various ethnicities deliver racial slurs directly into the camera) Spike mostly plays his cards close to his chest. After all, it's a hot day, and tempers are already frayed by the heat. It's only natural that people would be a little on edge. Most of our time is spent looking at things through the eyes of Spike's character Mookie, a delivery boy for the white-owned Sal's Pizzaria, and he seems to be a relatively easy-going guy. Petty conflicts emerge, but they all seem likely to fade as the temperature drops at night.
Sure enough, as the night cools and a group gathers for a late slice at Sal's Pizzeria things seem to have calmed down. And then the door bursts open and three people who have a beef with the shop walk in: Radio Raheem resents being ordered to turn off his boom box inside, Buggin' Out resents the lack of black faces on the Wall of Fame, and Smiley resents his treatment at the hands of Sal's openly racist son Pino. The tone shifts dramatically. Suddenly the film is all shot in dutch angles. The subordinate perspective with which Raheem has been shot the entire film takes on a sinister new dimension. Something is very wrong. An argument starts, and before long Sal has busted up Raheem's boom box and the fight has poured out into the street. The cops arrive, and it follows a script all-too familiar to us after the past year. Raheem is pulled off Sal by the cops, put in a cruel chokehold with a billy club, and dies when the police won't relax it.
The crowd is stunned. The viewer is stunned. What do we do? What do they do? And then Mookie grabs a trashcan and throws it through Sal's window, inciting a riot that burns the place to the ground. Sal's is a neighborhood institution - there for 25 years feeding everyone on the street. But one bad night, one flare up, and it's destroyed in a flash of hate and resentment and frustrated anger. But that's really only the secondary tragedy. The riot gets a the bulk of the attention because it's incited by the action of our point-of-view character. But let's not forget that just before the riot the police killed a man who did not need to be killed. They killed a man and, because Raheem was black, they will suffer no consequences. And the crowd knows it, and the audience knows it. There was no justice done. There will be no justice done.
Spike lets no one off the hook, and lets everyone off the hook. You empathize with both Raheem and Sal in their fight while condemning them both for resorting to violence. The mob's destruction of the pizzeria is both sickening and understandable. Does Mookie do the right thing in throwing that trash can? Spike Lee has famously said no black person has ever asked him that question. Radio Raheem, tragically, is unavailable for comment.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/11: The Conformist
An Italian political drama is our next Movie of the Week, about a flunky sent to assassinate an old teacher. It is available on Netflix Instant and Amazon Instant Video, though it is not free for Prime members.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW for 3/31: 10 Cloverfield Lane
On Wednesday we'll have an opportunity to discuss this brilliant new thriller and how it relates to Hitchcock's Psycho. 10 Cloverfield Lane is still in theaters!
I feel like I'm not really qualified to talk about this movie. I have the good fortune to be a middle-class white male from a predominately white suburban environment in a world where that's close to the best thing you can be. I haven't ever experienced the kind of racial tensions that play out in Do The Right Thing, because the circumstances of my life have sheltered me from them - I only know what I see on the news and read online. But that doesn't mean they don't exist, and Spike Lee spins his story in such a way as to drive home what those tensions mean for the people that live with them and how they can flare up in unexpected and tragic ways.
For most of its runtime, Do The Right Thing seems largely like a hangout movie. We spend time with a number of people living and/or working on a single street in Bed-Stuy, drifting between them as they go about their day. We see friendships and enmities that exist for various reasons, and while racial animus is present in the community (infamously in a montage where people of various ethnicities deliver racial slurs directly into the camera) Spike mostly plays his cards close to his chest. After all, it's a hot day, and tempers are already frayed by the heat. It's only natural that people would be a little on edge. Most of our time is spent looking at things through the eyes of Spike's character Mookie, a delivery boy for the white-owned Sal's Pizzaria, and he seems to be a relatively easy-going guy. Petty conflicts emerge, but they all seem likely to fade as the temperature drops at night.
Sure enough, as the night cools and a group gathers for a late slice at Sal's Pizzeria things seem to have calmed down. And then the door bursts open and three people who have a beef with the shop walk in: Radio Raheem resents being ordered to turn off his boom box inside, Buggin' Out resents the lack of black faces on the Wall of Fame, and Smiley resents his treatment at the hands of Sal's openly racist son Pino. The tone shifts dramatically. Suddenly the film is all shot in dutch angles. The subordinate perspective with which Raheem has been shot the entire film takes on a sinister new dimension. Something is very wrong. An argument starts, and before long Sal has busted up Raheem's boom box and the fight has poured out into the street. The cops arrive, and it follows a script all-too familiar to us after the past year. Raheem is pulled off Sal by the cops, put in a cruel chokehold with a billy club, and dies when the police won't relax it.
The crowd is stunned. The viewer is stunned. What do we do? What do they do? And then Mookie grabs a trashcan and throws it through Sal's window, inciting a riot that burns the place to the ground. Sal's is a neighborhood institution - there for 25 years feeding everyone on the street. But one bad night, one flare up, and it's destroyed in a flash of hate and resentment and frustrated anger. But that's really only the secondary tragedy. The riot gets a the bulk of the attention because it's incited by the action of our point-of-view character. But let's not forget that just before the riot the police killed a man who did not need to be killed. They killed a man and, because Raheem was black, they will suffer no consequences. And the crowd knows it, and the audience knows it. There was no justice done. There will be no justice done.
Spike lets no one off the hook, and lets everyone off the hook. You empathize with both Raheem and Sal in their fight while condemning them both for resorting to violence. The mob's destruction of the pizzeria is both sickening and understandable. Does Mookie do the right thing in throwing that trash can? Spike Lee has famously said no black person has ever asked him that question. Radio Raheem, tragically, is unavailable for comment.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/11: The Conformist
An Italian political drama is our next Movie of the Week, about a flunky sent to assassinate an old teacher. It is available on Netflix Instant and Amazon Instant Video, though it is not free for Prime members.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW for 3/31: 10 Cloverfield Lane
On Wednesday we'll have an opportunity to discuss this brilliant new thriller and how it relates to Hitchcock's Psycho. 10 Cloverfield Lane is still in theaters!