on Spike Lee "BlacKKKlansman"

I don’t usually write reviews. In fact, I don’t write at all. At least, not since my uni days where I dreamt of becoming a successful screenwriter and producer. Well actually, I dreamt of becoming the first Franco-Togolese woman to win an Oscar for Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Suffice to say, these days are long gone.

I am now an easily irritable, slightly on the heavy side around the tummy, thirty-five plus accountant who happens to suffer from despair in her job due to lack of creativity (surprise, surprise).

Yet, today and thus for the first time in years, I thought I’ll write a little about one of the few movies I got to watch over the last decade which wasn’t rated PG 13.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me share with you my experience with Mr Spike Lee’s latest: “BlacKKKlansman”.

It is fair to say that I am not necessary a Spike Lee fan. I’ve seen his documentaries “Four Little Girls” and “When the Levees Broke: À requiem in four acts”. They allowed me to get a sense of his persona as a human and a filmmaker. The man is outspoken. He doesn’t shy away from difficult and uncomfortable conversations at the point of being deemed extreme, sometimes.

Therefore, I had some mixed feelings about going to see “BlacKKKlansman”. But how could I not?

I’ve always been vocal about the lack of diversity and genre represented in mainstream cinema so how can I not go and show my support when one is being played on screens?

So I went, and little did I know I was in for a surprise and a very good one for that matter.

The marvellous John David Washington (yes, his father is this Washington) portrays Ron Stallworth, an ambitious and witty Afro-American officer from the Colorado Springs Police Department who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan in the early 70s with the help of his Jewish colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver).

The movie makes reference to  several recurring topics and stereotypes in Afro-Americans and Black people’s lives such as their speech, behaviour and unfortunate encounters with the police. There is a scene where at a small event, a guest speaker talks about beauty perception and the beauty of Black men and women. Call me shallow if you wish but the words spoken in this scene were poignant.

They brought me back to my school and teenage years when I thought I wasn’t beautiful because of my dark skin, broad nose and full lips.

I remember looking at magazines and only seeing white beautiful women I couldn’t relate to.

These publications offered tips on make-up and hair which didn’t work for my skin tone and hair texture. They only told me that to be pretty you needed to either look like an English rose or a Parisienne with red lipstick. They told me that sexually attractive and beautiful women had long silky hair and pink nipples. I truly wish the empowering lines in that scene had been told to the world. I truly wish that we had been taught that beauty comes in different shapes and forms.

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That is part of the tour-de-force Lee succeeds in pulling in the 2 hours your are sitting on the edge of your seat. Regardless of your ethnicity, religion, sex and sexual-orientation, the movie resonates with you – decent human being.

Many of the nerve-wracking scenes do not even feature Washington but Driver. Driver’s character (having to step in for his colleague to meet face-to-face with members of the KKK due to his vanilla-skin tone) is often at risk of being unmasked by them. He also has to endure vicious comments made about the Holocaust and Jews.

“BlacKKKlansman” is not a  movie which condemns bigotry against Afro-Americans. It is a movie which condemns bigotry. Full stop.

The coup de grace comes evidently at the end, when Lee draws the painful and frightening parallels between the United States of America in the 70s and the United States of America today, under the chaotic and alienating Trump’s administration.

So if you haven’t already done so, get up and go watch “BlacKKKlansman” .