BlacKkKlansman (2018)
A preposterous premise with a powerful message.
BlacKkKlansman is, in my opinion, one of the most important movies of our time. And this is not something I say lightly. There are many great films out there today and I know there will continue to be powerful and daring movies made in the coming months and years, but there’s something special about Spike Lee’s latest creation. It’s sad that a movie about the KKK rings so true in 2019, but it does, and that should disturb us.
I hear some voices saying that racism is dead — long dead — and this film is a perfect rebuttal to that particular assertion. Though racism has “gone underground” it is making a resurgence, rearing its ugly head, screaming at the top of its lungs, and making sure it takes as many people down as it can. I’m writing this just a few days after a deadly shooting in New Zealand that was motivated by white supremacy, months after the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue, and a year and a half after the Charlottesville tragedy.
We expect racism and the KKK to be alive and well in the 1970s, but surely today, in 2019, something like this couldn’t happen. But it did and it still does.
One thing that I love about this film is that it does nothing to make the viewers feel good. BlacKkKlansman is an invitation to wake up and see the world as it is, warts and all. And…
