Timely (hopefully not timeless) stop on the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition).
This one and I met back in 1990 or 1991.
Film 66
66. "Do The Right Thing" (AFI Rank #96)
Whenever it was that I first saw this film, I didn't find it all that compelling. It was good, yes, perhaps even VERY good, but I didn't view it as "mind-blowingly" good, or understand just what was so freaking revolutionary about it.
Then I went and watched a bunch of classic great films, aged 25 years, and the world...well...the world didn't change a bit. Not one single bit.
More revolutionary than its initial release would have one believe, "Do The Right Thing" should probably be brought out right about now, as America, especially with race, continues down its merry path of not doing a fucking thing. Yes, we've got an African-American President, who's had the bar for success moved every time he achieves one of the critics' goals. We're worse off today, as a people, than we were 25 years ago, and Donald Trump's popularity is technicolor proof of just how bad it is. We're worse off because we've had 25 more years to fix it and haven't done a fucking thing.
I'm going to confess a few things. 1. I've actually seen a number of Spike Lee Joints, and I've always considered "Malcolm X" to be Spike Lee's triumph. I am changing my mind on that. As great as Denzel Washington's portrayal of the doomed civil rights leader was, it, as a film, in retrospect, stand up to the magnificence of this film. 2. I would not be as passionate about this film if I had not educated myself with the films of Robert Altman, especially "Nashville." 3. Shame on you, Academy. This might (might) have been the best film of the 80s, let alone 1989. Show me a Best Picture winner from the 80s that was better than this, and I'm going to throw number 2, "Platoon," right the fuck out, because it's not a better film than this one is.
Perhaps I'm at an age where I've seen too much. Perhaps I'm weary of reading of young black men being killed because an overzealous police officer decided that whatever he did was punishable by death. Perhaps I'm just sick of the idea that I can walk down the street in several states legally brandishing a gun. Meanwhile, a black man...nah, not so much. That's wrong. Yet, that's where we are, in 2015, in this "United" States of America.
I'm veering off track and onto social commentary. That this film has that wrapped up in a relatively neat little Hollywood package is something that can be criticized, for sure. Sure "Schindler's List" is terrifying, but ultimately it's got a Hollywood ending. This film, especially in one scene in which John Savage appears, feels like a "A Different World" version of a black neighborhood. I'm waiting for Kadeem Hardison to appear with flip up sunglasses and start hassling Whitley. That doesn't happen, but it feels there. The film is splashy colorful, it's got one bum (maybe 4), and most of the kids seem to be just trying to get by, without anything really bothering them. In that way, this film rings perhaps a little hollow. There isn't a street in Bedford-Stuyvesant that has the color palette featured in this film. There isn't a DJ sitting in the window, commenting on people walking by, the vocal observer of all that happens on the block. This stuff doesn't exist. I read a comment somewhere saying that this film is really a piece of theatre, and may as well be on a stage. I'll be damned, but that's pretty apt.
Directed by Spike Lee, this film is a 24 hour slice of life from one block in Brooklyn in a summer swelter. As the day progresses, people's anger gets agitated, and finally, it boils over when someone decides that he has more rights than anyone else. Spurred on by a character named Buggin Out, played by ITALIAN actor Giancarlo Esposito, the character of Radio Raheem (gargantuan actor Bill Nunn) decides that maybe Sal's Pizza, owned by Sal (Danny Aiello) and his two sons, Pino (John Turturro) and Vito (Richard Edson), should have some African-Americans on the wall (he's probably right about that), and that maybe his oversized, overpowered boom box can be played at any volume he chooses, wherever he chooses. (He's wrong about that) Sal, who's actually had a pretty good day, finally snaps, and decides to take matters into his own hands, and after several warnings, smashes Radio Raheem's radio with a baseball bat. Of course, tempers then flare beyond reason, the word "nigger" is slung about by Sal, and Radio Raheem, a man who is too large to be that angry, is dragged away by police, who then, in the process of trying to get him restrained, kill him. Well, that's not true. The policeman clearly has him restrained, he is clearly in distress, and he kills him anyway. A full blown riot then ensues, sparked - really - by Mookie (Spike Lee), Sal's delivery boy, who throws a garbage can through Sal's Pizzeria's window. 
That this only occurs in one store, and is really well contained, speaks to the "Hollywood" version of what would likely happen in a case like this. We've seen countless events much, much worse than this, but they usually occur AFTER the miscarriage of justice by the courts, or whomever, protecting police. Yes, I said it. I don't think deadly force is justifiable in almost every single case. Choosing to end another human being's life...whatever. I'm off the movie again. I called this a great film. It is. It calls back to Robert Altman in structure, in that we meet more than a dozen compelling characters, and while their stories, as individuals, are largely unremarkable, their collective energy in the complete picture really makes the ending pay off. We know who these people are, we understand why the things that happen to them...well...happen to them. We care about them happening. Populated with peripheral characters like Smiley, Sweet Dick Willie, Coconut Sid, Mother Sister, and Da Mayor, we see the craft of filmmaking in nearly every shot of this film. Take Da Mayor's (Ossie Davis) speech as the sun starts to go down. He's just redeemed himself for the day by saving a young child from being run over, and as he turns and speaks, the dusk happens over his shoulder, then...a single street light illuminates. It's that kind of attention to detail, that emotional button thrown in there by Lee, that only film can accomplish. That is but one of a dozen details I could point out, but won't, in the interest of time. Spike Lee knew what he was doing when he made the film, and he did it well. He also pays tribute to films like "The Night of the Hunter," pulling one scene almost directly from it, and twisting it for his purposes. Throw in a device like Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson), the DJ up the block who acts as a kind of Greek Chorus, not really advancing the story at all, but always there, always commenting on what is happening. It is his tribute to Radio Raheem that crushes us in the final moments. How does that happen? It happens because someone took the time to make us care about the Love Daddy.
Acting in this film is subpar, for the most part. Characters tend to be caricatures, or archetypes. That's not what makes this film great. This film is great because of its totality. Its overwhelming commitment to theme, to style, to story. I mentioned Sal throwing around the word "nigger." He'd done a really great job, throughout the film, of convincing his son Pino that the people he served were customers. That he'd watched them grow up, that he'd always been there for them, and that they'd always been there for him. He'd made a good living in this neighborhood, and while he wasn't the same as those he served, he knew an opportunity when he saw it. He genuinely cares for them, or appears to. Then, one of them finally pisses him off to where he can't take it, and he devolves into a rage filled man, throwing the word "nigger" around like he'd been holding it back for years. In that moment, all decorum fades, all business sensibility goes out the window, all sentiment is gone. The radio was too loud, the kid wouldn't listen, and the kids in the shop are screaming. Now, instead of customers...they're niggers. It's a powerful scene, and one that I find myself, if I'm honest, too often in myself. No, I don't use the word "nigger," but I do call women "cows," or "bitch," and I've been known to make harsh judgments based on stereotype, occasionally even uttering them aloud. Why? Don't know. Wish I did. It's been put there, though, for whatever reason, and reason fades in moments where I'm not thinking. I'm not alone in this, I know, and I apologize for it, but don't shy from admitting it. I think, to a certain extent, that is the crux of the moment in the film. Lee isn't making judgments on that, as he shows Mookie doing the same thing, himself. Lee's just asking us to acknowledge it. Well, Mr. Lee. I do acknowledge it. I do it. I know you know it.
I need to talk about the final scene, when Mookie, who THREW A TRASH CAN THROUGH HIS BOSS'S WINDOW, goes to collect his pay. It's a heartbreaking scene, lacking all sensibility, that makes no judgments. Mookie, now an unemployed street hustler with a kid, is there just trying to get his from a man that he helped take everything from. Sal, understanding his own culpability in this disaster, is left with nothing but his pride, or what's left of it. It's a monster scene, one that could easily be cut from the film, and save a great deal of awkwardness, but one that is so vital to the conclusions (or lack of them) that this film draws, that, again, we're left to wonder at its brilliance.
I'm not going to convince you of this film's greatness until you watch it yourself, with today's events resounding in your ears. I know I wasn't convinced, in 1990, or whenever the hell I first watched it. I thought it was good, but I didn't see its specialness. I do now.
You really need to take some time and watch this film. It's what great filmmaking is all about, and I'm glad...no...really glad...that I gave this one another chance.
It's odd. I've actually seen a good chunk of Spike Lee's early resume, from "Mo' Better Blues," to "Jungle Fever," to the aforementioned "Malcolm X." I watched this one first, and was drawn to him so much that I was willing to watch a bunch of his other stuff. I don't get it.
Bah.
Watch this film. It's that great. I didn't even mention Rosie Perez. That's how great it is.
Ebert is far more eloquent than I, and revisited this film towards the end of his life. His take is here.
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