Cinemaphile/Joanne Sargent
The premise of a black man joining the Ku Klux Klan sounds so unlikely, it has to be based on true events.
From director Spike Lee comes BlacKkKlansman, halfway between comedy and drama, telling the true story of one fascinating undercover operation in the 1970s, while also offering biting commentary on the uneasy similarities to current events in the United States.
It’s 1978 and the story is Ron Stallworth’s, the first black police officer in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Ambitious and a little foolhardy, he answers a recruitment ad for the local KKK, convincing them that he is a rabid racist.
This sets in motion an ingenious scheme where he converses with the Klan over the phone and his partner Flip Zimmerman, ironically a white Jewish man (second only to blacks in the KKK’s targets), poses as Ron when the Klan wants to meet him.
As they get deeper into the KKK’s infrastructure, suspicions about them grow and we’re uncertain whether Flip, wearing a wire, will be caught. Can they keep the dangerous charade going long enough to thwart the Klan’s intended acts of violence?
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Denzel Washington’s son, John David Washington, plays Stallworth and gives a charismatic and forceful performance of a complex man always hiding some part of himself: that he’s a “pig” (cop) to his activist girlfriend or his conflicted feelings about his corrupt and often racist colleagues. Adam Driver is stunning as Flip Zimmerman, a man caught in a precarious game of pretend.
Called one of the year’s best films, BlacKkKlansman is so real and so engaging you just want to see where it goes.
Thought-provoking and definitely unsettling, with some disturbing and violent content, it’s a shameful portrait of racist America and the sickening mindset of the KKK in the ’70s, but, thankfully, with moments of levity to relieve the tension.
In the movie, a white character kindly reassures Stallworth that the U.S. will never elect a racist to the White House – hmmm.
BlacKkKlansman is a co-presentation with the Salmar Theatre, so it will have a seven-day run from Friday Nov. 9 to Thursday Nov. 15.
The Shuswap Film Society is your host on Friday and Saturday.
Please take note showtime is 7:30 each evening.
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