IT HAPPENED HERE
IN A CASE WHERE THE EVENTS OF HISTORY IMPROVE UPON the fantasies of fiction, BlacKkKlansman, the latest Spike Lee joint, is based on the 2014 memoir written by Ron Stallworth, a black undercover police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in 1979. True to the director’s lifelong interest in depicting black history, he hews close to the truth of the author’s accounts. Stallworth did become a card-carrying member of the Klan; he did wire a white police officer and send him to rendezvous with the Klan’s Colorado Springs chapter; and he did have an ongoing phone correspondence with David Duke, leading to an uncomfortable dilemma when he was assigned to be Duke’s bodyguard during the white supremacist politician’s trip to the local chapter.
However, Lee does not get lost in the details of Stallworth’s life story, and BlacKkKlansman is no straight biopic. Instead, it follows the beats of a traditional cop movie, where a man of the law is torn between allegiances in his efforts to solve a case. In this regard, the film represents the latest chapter in the underrated career of Spike Lee, genre filmmaker.
Many of Lee’s movies, like , , , and , have used the landscape, the neighborhoods, and the culture of New York City to provide structure for his style and storytelling. Much as his idol, playwright August Wilson, did in his famous Pittsburgh Cycle, Lee, , , and now Lee manages to crack the codes of genre storytelling, confronting audiences by placing the black experience at the center of familiar narratives.
