newcritics

An early happy birthday to Spike Lee, who turns 50 on Tuesday. He has always struck me as the most interesting modern American director, because he is so unpredictable. Indie films, big budget films, riveting documentaries, music videos, sneakers commercials. He’s done it all, and he only seems to be getting better. I’ll admit that I wasn’t that crazy about Inside Man, his foray into the Hollywood studio film last year, but I believe that When The Levees Broke, his documentary on Katrina and its aftermath, was the best film of 2006.

So, his birthday this week seemed the right moment for me to revisit Do The Right Thing, which I hadn’t seen since its release in 1989. I remember not being sure how to process the film as a film back then, since it was so entwined with all the overheated “controversy” on editorial pages. Looking at it again now, I see beyond the headlines of that time and marvel at what a masterful work of art Do The Right Thing is.

In many ways, the film is a perfect blend of the real and the theatrical. The real, in terms of its modern themes of race, class and prejudice in New York and its central philosophic question of violence vs. non-violence. And the theatrical, in the way these “characters” explore their inner demons, their hopes, desires and failures, as they intersect on a Bed-Stuy street that is as artifically primed as anything you’d see in, say, West Side Story. It could be called Bed-Stuy Story, and audiences years from now are not going to need to understand the references to Tawana Brawley, Howard Beach and the New York mayoral election to appreciate the film.

The film has so many things to recommend, beyond Lee’s vivid writing and direction. Ernest Dickerson’s photography and the set design recreate a sense of sweltering, oppressive heat. The voice-over by the radio DJ Senor Love Daddy ties the street tales together with a fluid, comic grace. Bill Lee’s underrated score pulses with everything from traditional jazz themes to Copland-esque motifs (and, of course, the central Public Enemy song, Fight The Power, with the unforgettable line that “Elvis didn’t mean s— to me.”)

The performances are brilliant across the board, not only from such early glimpses of Samuel L. Jackson, Rosie Perez and Martin Lawrence, but in the depth of feeling and nuance that Ossie Davis, Danny Aiello, Ruby Dee, John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito and Lee bring to their roles. And for all the years I’ve been watching Bill Nunn in TV and film as a sort of gentle giant, I had completely forgotten the towering, haunted performance he gives as Radio Raheem.

What was hard (at least for me) to see in the take-sides debate during its initial release was how democratic Lee is to his characters, exploring how we’re all flawed human beings with good and bad impulses and how we all have prejudices that we fight to control and understand. It’s most evident in the creation of Aiello’s pizzeria owner Sal, who could have been a straight-up cracker racist. But Lee gives him shadings of decency and morality and tenderness, which makes the ending burst of violence and pent-up rage on all sides so much more powerful and saddening.

What an affecting, genuine work of poetic art. And with such films as When The Levees Broke, Malcolm X, 25th Hour, Get On The Bus and Bamboozled, Lee continues to be the most misunderstood and least appreciated of major American directors. Do The Right Thing is a film of its time, but one that will endure long beyond it.