BlacKkKlansman

A similar scene comes late in the film when Harry Belafonte portrays a man recounting the story of the despicable murder of a mentally disabled child. I would love to know more about that story. Belafonte tells it so convincingly that it’s easy to believe he was there, and I am sure the story is true. But what I wonder is, did Harry Belafonte actually witness something similar as a child? Surely this isn’t his own anecdote because this film takes place in the 1970s (mostly). Or maybe it is an event the actor actually witnessed, and they folded it into the film? I will have to learn more about this. I have no doubt the story is true. What I want to know is, is it actually Belafonte’s story? He’s an actor playing a role, so there’s no reason it should be. But there’s such an aura of authenticity in his presence. I’m curious.

Best Action Sequence:
The last big encounter in front of Patrice’s house is the best action sequence (unless you count those sobering scenes at the end).

But I also love the moments surrounding that lie detector test in the basement. That’s a thrilling part of the movie to watch. And, that’s actually when the whole story feels most cinematic, the most purely entertaining. You know it’s a movie about partners in law enforcement because afterwards their superior is screaming at them.

Best Scene Visually:
I really do love all those recruitment films projected onto Alec Baldwin’s face as he paces in front of the screen. I may be reading too much into it, but this seems like a symbolic way of showing that everything in those films is still in the foreground today, that we might see such issues not just in old movies, but written right across the face of somebody very familiar. Honesty, I think I could write a short article about just this scene. There’s quite a bit packed into these early moments, and the movie does a lot to unpack it for us as it unfolds.

Also, I love the look of the conversation Ron and Patrice have on the long, gorgeous bridge. That scene is just so pleasing aesthetically. I love the intrusion of all the movie posters, but honestly the whole thing reminds me of an album cover, or maybe a commercial for anthologies of 70s love songs. I could go rambling on in great detail here, too.

Another great moment visually is Ron’s investigation of the shooting range. (I almost called him Phone Ron to distinguish him from Real Ron, but then I thought, “Wait! He is the real Ron!”  Since I’ve said that, I’ll also note that I love the movie’s focus on fractured identity, cognitive dissonance, the difficulty of having multiple selves living in a society that also has multiple selves. I absolutely love the way that Flip “pretends” to be Ron—until he discovers that he really is “Ron” and he’s basically only been pretending to be Flip. The movie strongly punches the idea that standing up for the persecuted isn’t just morally right, it’s also highly practical because you’re probably about to be persecuted, too.

The Negatives:
After the movie, I said to my husband, “My mother would hate that movie, and your mother would hate it, too.”

He agreed and then listed off several other relatives of ours who would hate it.

No matter what, and no matter how much I enjoyed it, there are going to be some people who just would not enjoy BlacKkKlansman. At all.

I mean, obviously, I’m sure David Duke is not a fan (or maybe he is secretly. Maybe he was a huge fan of That ’70s Show with a big poster of Topher Grace up on his bedroom wall, and now he’s star struck and all his dreams are coming true.) But I don’t have any inside scoop on David Duke, so let’s just leave him out of it.

You don’t have to be personally insulted or horribly racist to find the movie not to your tastes.

Some people don’t like to watch stuff that deals with unpleasant, uncomfortable material. I am positive that my mother would find watching this movie torturous. If forced to watch, she would forget that she had seen it within two months, genuinely forget. (She has a rare knack for that. In fact, when David Duke’s name started being in the news again recently, she declared that she had never heard of him.

I said, “But he ran for president in 1988!”

“I don’t know what happened then,” she said. “I was raising children!”

“But I was the children!” I said, “And I knew! I was nine! How did I know if you didn’t know?”

She didn’t know.)

My mother certainly isn’t in favor of torturing children or domestic terrorism. She would never degrade people based on their race. But she would not like this movie. It’s just too intense, too real for her. (She also won’t watch The Little Mermaid because of that part at the end with Ursula.)

Some people just don’t like unpleasant things. Everybody is entitled to their own tastes. She loves Casablanca which has always terrified me. (What if the day comes when you have to do the right thing, and you find you’re too morally weak?)

So some people just won’t like this movie, and not much can be done about it.

Now I love movies like this because I’m always thrilled to be engaged in so many different ways (intellectually, morally, spiritually, socially, emotionally). I love to watch the work of gifted people showing me something I haven’t seen before.

But even I found this difficult to watch, sometimes. I don’t mean that I wanted to stop watching. I mean that it was hard to know how to react. There were multiple times when I found myself wondering, “Is that supposed to be funny?  I don’t think it’s appropriate to laugh at that.” Or at times, I would laugh, then think, “Should I have laughed at that?”

Actually, that’s one of the things I like about the movie. It shows that we should be careful about being dismissive of people. Paul Walter Hauser (who plays a similar character in I, Tonya) at first seems like a goofy idiot worthy of either pity or ridicule depending on your mood. He’s always talking about blowing stuff up with C-4. But he’s so ridiculous…except that he is part of a group that has C-4, and they do blow something up. (I also love that this guy is named Ivanhoe since Ivanhoe’s dad is that Norman hating Cedric the Saxon, who is always yelling things like, “Norman dogs!”)

One of the funniest moments in the movie, actually, comes around the same time as Belafonte’s chilling story is being told elsewhere. And the moment after we laugh, we get the introduction of real menace.

So this is not a movie you can relax and enjoy on a first viewing. Then again, imagine how difficult it must be to laugh if you know you might just randomly be murdered in the street at any time.  How does Harry Belafonte’s character ever laugh after what he witnessed as a child?  And yet we must all laugh sometimes.

Overall: