{"id":22029,"date":"2018-08-23T11:03:45","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T01:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=22029"},"modified":"2018-10-30T22:16:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T12:16:59","slug":"blackkklansman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=22029","title":{"rendered":"BlackKklansman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagfilm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"blackKklansmanposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Spike Lee
\nWriters:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz
\nCast:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier<\/p>\n

\u00a0T<\/span>here was once a black guy who was a member of the KKK.\u00a0 True story.<\/p>\n

His name was Ron Stallworth.\u00a0 He was the first black police officer in the Colorado Springs police department.\u00a0\u00a0Stallworth (played by John David Washington) worked in the intelligence division and he began to do undercover work on the KKK and incredibly, he managed to infiltrate their organization by posing as a caucasian extremist on the phone, and then sending in his Jewish college Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) in his place for face to face meetings.<\/p>\n

This bizarre but true story has been adapted by Spike Lee into\u00a0BlackKklansman<\/em>, one of the film industry’s first great polemics about the Trump administration and the roots of his populist movement.<\/p>\n

\"blackKklansman\"<\/a><\/p>\n

BlackKklansman<\/em> is an exceptional piece of film making and a real return to form for Spike Lee.\u00a0 It is a particularly well rounded tale that works effectively as a crime drama, a\u00a0Seventies blaxploitation homage\u00a0and a dark comedy all at once.\u00a0 The subject matter at the heart of the film -white resentment – is politically charged and highly topical, but Lee successfully walks a tightrope juxtaposing scenes that delve into the intense hatred of the klansman with moments of light and levity as Stallworth and his allies work to infiltrate their organization.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to note that some of the most cutting moments that capture the darkness of the white supremacists in this film are communicated to the audience through speeches and not actual scenes of violence.\u00a0 There is a moment in the film that jumps between the klansman watching\u00a0Birth of a Nation<\/em> and an African American elder talking about the lynching of a young black boy that I found both chilling and particularly memorable.<\/p>\n

BlackKklansman<\/em> is a film that serves as a commentary about the current political landscape in America and to that end, I think some of the film’s most disturbing characters aren’t the leaders of the klan, but the foot soldiers and the every day racists that do their bidding.\u00a0 In particular, there is a married couple involved with the klan, Felix and his wife Connie, who outwardly have the appearance of cheerful, domesticated suburbanites, but they hold some of the darkest views of anyone in the film and volunteer themselves as terrorists to murder black folk.<\/p>\n

\u00a0BlackKklansman<\/em> deals with some heavy subject matter but for most of the film, it is a surprisingly light-footed watch.\u00a0 As I said, there aren’t scenes of graphic violence and although we see some ugly racism, it is definitely offset by a comedic undercurrent.<\/p>\n

The film sort of lulls the audience into a false sense of security.\u00a0 There is a false ending that is uplifting and has a feeling of All’s Well, That Ends Well about it.\u00a0 The good guys won and the klansman were foiled.\u00a0 You feel pretty good.<\/p>\n

That is until the\u00a0actual<\/em>\u00a0final scene of the film where Lee dispenses with the analogies and draws a direct through-line between the events of the film and the Donald Trump presidency.\u00a0 Lee uses real life footage of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville including footage of Heather Heyer’s final moments before she is mowed down by a white supremacist in a car.\u00a0 It is an absolutely horrifying conclusion to the film and\u00a0as we watch the former KKK leader David Duke endorse Trump and rewatch Trump’s infamous ‘fine people on both sides’ speech, it lays bear the awful truth about the current president of the United States and the people he represents.\u00a0 They didn’t go anywhere.\u00a0 They merely lay dormant and bid their time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer from Colorado, successfully manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan with the help of a white surrogate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2729,2732,2426,2731,2730],"class_list":["post-22029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-blackkklansman","tag-david-rabinowitz","tag-donald-trump","tag-john-david-washington","tag-spike-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22029"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22258,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22029\/revisions\/22258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}