“Black detective infiltrates Ku Klux Klan” is the six-word pitch with which producer Jordan Peele brought director Spike Lee on board BlacKkKlansman. It sounds absurd; the plot of a forgotten ‘70s blaxploitation movie, maybe. And yet, it’s true.
In 1979, Colorado Springs police officer Ron Stallworth, recently transferred to the intelligence section, saw a Klan recruitment ad in the local newspaper. He called the number, posed as a virulently racist white man, and soon found himself invited to meetings. To solve the obvious problem here, a white officer doubled as Stallworth when any face-to-face meetings were necessary, and the two of them gathered intelligence on the KKK over a nine-month investigation.
Lee, one of the most celebrated directors of African American stories, takes this real life account, as told in Stallworth’s 2014 memoir, as a base and really runs with it, piling on the style. His take on Stallworth, portrayed by John David Washington in what should rightfully be a breakout role, is all charm and swagger, dressing like a character from Shaft, Coffy, or one of the other cult black movies he quotes, never dropping composure as he constantly one-ups the Klan. The movie’s sharp sense of humour is at its peak in our hero’s phone calls to Klan head David Duke, who remains utterly oblivious to teases of Stallworth’s true identity.
You can tell Lee’s taking liberties with the truth when Duke decides to visit Colorado Springs in person, a visit conveniently juxtaposed with a black power rally and a bomb plot, but it all adds up to a movie that’s a delight to watch. At the black gathering, Harry Belafonte cameos as an activist telling a heartbreaking anecdote, which is intercut with the Klan members watching notoriously racist film The Birth Of A Nation; cinema historians will relish the irony here – Birth Of A Nation pioneered this technique of parallel editing.
And that’s just one example of how BlacKkKlansman has more depth than you may think on first glance. There’s a lot of careful character work going on, notably in Adam Driver’s Flip Zimmerman, the detective chosen to be the white Ron Stallworth. Zimmerman sees the investigation at first as nothing but another job, but seeing the hate espoused by the Klan, including towards his own Jewish heritage, soon comes to question his own approach.
That said, BlacKkKlansman is not a subtle movie, and it won’t be to everyone’s tastes. Lee’s fellow director Boots Riley has publicly criticised the film for portraying the police in too positive a light, and indeed it does seem odd how quickly Stallworth’s white superiors are won over by his plan. At one point towards the end, it looks like loose ends are being tied up in one way-too-neat bow.
But then, Lee twists the knife, ending the film on a shocking reminder that the racial issues explored in the film are all too relevant today. BlacKkKlansman is provocative political filmmaking, and a hilarious, empowering piece of entertainment too. That combination may not always provide the smoothest ride, but it’s essential to watch, and to talk about.
BLACKkKLANSMAN / DIRECTOR: SPIKE LEE / SCREENPLAY: CHARLIE WACHTEL, DAVID RABINOWITZ, KEVIN WILLMOTT, SPIKE LEE / STARRING: JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON, ADAM DRIVER, LAURA HARRIER, TOPHER GRACE / CERT: 15 / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
