Do the Right Thing

Going to the movies as a first date isn't always a good idea. Especially if the movie in question is as sexy as Belle de Jour, as stupid as Little Nicky, or as hilarious as Superfly (i.e. the bubble bath/soaped-booty love scene)--all of which I survived.

Michelle and Barack Obama's first date, according to Wikipedia? Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Wow!

Ebert writes: In May 1989, I walked out of the screening at the Cannes Film Festival with tears in my eyes. Spike Lee had done an almost impossible thing. He'd made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the participants. He didn't draw lines or take sides, but simply looked with sadness at one racial flashpoint that stood for many others.

His next line was: Not everybody thought the film was evenhanded.
I wrote: People see what they want to see--the point of the movie.

As he writes, it covers a day in the life of a Brooklyn neighborhood, and is not just about "how the cops kill a black man and a mob burns down a pizzeria." The man is Radio Raheem (above), and I learned that the LOVE and HATE knuckles were an "echo" of Robert Mitchum's character's tattoos in Night of the Hunter. I thought that was brilliant, and that Ebert had just taught me something very special about film- not only that directors' intentions can be so complex, but that there are all sorts of little homages and references you can't pick up on until you've seen a great lot of movies!

My notes:

-Saw alone in a small neighborhood theater, Central Cinema. Had 2 Mac & Jacks and a turkey pig-in-a-blanket. A Superman cartoon from the '30s or '40s played first, and there was a 5-minute intermission that encouraged you to "get another round of drinks" or "kiss your lover." ESG played in the lobby when I arrived, and drum and bass on KEXP when I left. There was a leopard-striped cat with a rhinestone collar outside, named Sativa.

-Next to Ebert's mention of the film as a stylistic achievement: of 1989! Oh, the neon bike shorts! Rosie Perez's fly-girl dance moves and shiny blue leotard!

-I wonder why Sal's son doesn't feel more like Sal in his attitudes...he grew up with the black kids after all, right?

-Underlined: None of these people are perfect. But Lee makes it possible for us to understand their feelings; his empathy is crucial to the film, because if you can't try to understand how the other person feels, you're a captive inside the box of yourself.

Those who found this film an incitement to violence are saying much about themselves and nothing useful about the movie.

I found that pretty meta, and made a note to use in my own writing: Always strive to have something useful to say about the artwork, not about (or just about) your own reaction to it. Good to remember for reviews of all kinds.

After I Wiki'd the film at home, I also learned the meaning behind the graffiti in one scene, "Tawana told the truth!"

And lastly, Do the Right Thing ends with two quotations, one from MLK, Jr. that violence is never justified; one from Malcolm X that violence is "intelligent" when it's self-defense.

I would love to talk with Obama about that problem, and all the others, that the movie raises for examination.