BlacKkKlansman was my introduction to the filmography of Spike Lee and left me with a craving for more of his work. There’s a lot to love about Lee’s adaptation of Ron Stallworth’s memoir, stemming from how enjoyable it is throughout.
The majority of this comes from its script, written by Lee in conjunction with Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott. It poses a consistent balance of genre that engages the viewer while making its protagonists believable and quickly relatable. It shifts carefully between drama and comedy, sometimes even using both simultaneously, to deliver a more upbeat meditation of racism that makes you laugh at white supremacists just as much as it makes you fear them.
This nuance is seen in numerous aspects of the film thanks to Lee’s cohesive direction. Through its setting, cinematography, soundtrack and costume design, Lee stylises BlacKkKlansman as a Blaxploitation film. Its correlations to the genre quickly establishes an authenticity to the film’s setting and its characters, easily immersing the viewer in the world of Ron and Flip.
While the performances are solid across the board, there are a few standouts. I was intrigued the most by Adam Driver’s acting - playing both Jewish cop Flip and the face of ‘Ron Stallworth‘. Driver’s best moments come from the unnerving scenes where these two personalities collide, alleviating tension in the film’s most dramatic moments. John David Washington, playing the real Ron Stallworth, delivers a suave performance that gives weight to the film’s most profound moments and its most humorous. I liked the range of Washington’s performance and how it changed around certain characters, making for a honest, and compassionate, performance. I was most surprised by Jasper Pääkkönen’s portrayal of Felix, a Klansman dubious of Stallworth’s trust from the jump. Like my favourite film villains, Pääkkönen made Felix feel erratic, unpredictable, and quite terrifying; qualities which cut even deeper in a true story narrative.
I was also very fond of the film’s cinematography, handled by Chayse Irvin. In some true-story films there is a tendency to use a more desaturated palette and handheld camerawork to reflect authenticity. BlacKkKlansman, however, takes cues from the Blaxploitation genre to achieve this same authenticity which feels less dreary. Its colourful palette reflects the film's upbeat tone as well as the optimism and courage of the Black power movement. This palette begins to mute as we move into the sections featuring the Klansman, demonstrating an interesting marriage between cinematography and storytelling.
While BlacKkKlansman takes a more lighthearted approach in tackling racism and the presence of the Klan in the post-civil rights era, this approach steers suddenly into darkness in its ending montage. Among footage of white supremacy protests, we see disturbing videos of the terrorist attack that took place in Charlottesville in 2017. While the montage is necessary in understanding the presence white supremacy still has in today’s America, it felt jarring after the calm resolve of the film’s ending.
Overall, BlacKkKlansman is one of the best mediations on the battle against white supremacy. It’s adoption of the Blaxploitation genre alongside an entertaining script and focused direction makes it one of my favourite crime films of the decade.