Do the Right Thing

The Governor's Awards of the Motion Picture Academy have been announced, and one of them is going to Spike Lee. This interesting on a few levels. One, Lee is only 58, which seems a bit young for a lifetime achievement award, especially considering he is still a working director. Secondly, he has had a checkered career. Without a doubt he has made some great films, but they are few and far between when you consider his entire output.

The cynic might accuse the Academy of tokenism, as Lee is a black director, and no director of African descent has ever won an Oscar. Lee has never even been nominated as Best Director, although he does have a screenplay and documentary nomination.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to visit some of Lee's films, including a few that I'll be revisiting. I'm certainly not going to watch them all--I have no burning desire to see School Daze or Girl 6 again--but I'm interested in seeing some of his more recent films, as a new film from him is no longer news. I did, by coincidence, see Oldboy not too long ago.

I turn to his third film, and still his best, Do the Right Thing, released in 1989. His first film, She's Gotta Have It, was an enjoyable if amateurish sex comedy that caused some to call Lee the black Woody Allen. But with Do the Right Thing, Lee matured as a filmmaker, making one of the best films of the '80s and perhaps the best American film ever about the ticklish issue of race in the U.S. I hadn't seen it since I first saw it when it was released, in a packed house in Jersey City, when there were shouts from the audience. It was electrifying.

Seeing it again I marveled at Lee's assurance as a director. There are a lot of daring shots in the film, but none of them seem wrong. He uses a lot of different angles, shooting from below, shooting from above, pans, and moving cameras. They all work. The script is also terrific, focusing on 24 hours on a street in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, where an Italian-American (Danny Aiello) has built a pizza business thriving, despite the neighborhood being entirely black or brown.

Lee creates many characters in the film, a kind of patchwork quilt of modern America. Aiello has two sons, the easy-going Vito (Richard Edson) and the hate-filled Pino (John Turturro), who hates black people, even though he admires Magic Johnson, Eddie Murphy, and Prince. "They're not real black people," he hopelessly tells Mookie (Lee) a delivery man who gets along with Aiello, but is nagged by a feeling he is on the wrong side of the fence. Mookie has a child with a Puerto Rican woman (Rosie Perez), but he hardly ever visits her, even though she lives up the block.

Other characters include Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), a drunken stumblebum who is the sage of the neighborhood, Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), who is likewise a font of wisdom, and three fellows who sit under an umbrella (it's a scorching hot day) and comment on the action like they were a Greek chorus. We also get a local DJ (Samuel L. Jackson, when he was just called Sam) and a bunch of young people (including a young Martin Lawrence).

The first hour or so of Do the Right Thing is a kind of sociological experiment, as the characters exist in tense peace. A white man (John Savage), daringly wearing a Larry Bird jersey, scuffs the shoes of Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), who questions his right to live there. Esposito will also set in motion the tragic consequences of the plot, when he wonders why Aiello has "no picture of brothers on the wall," a reference to the exclusive gallery of Italian-American's on the pizzeria's wall. When Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), who carries with him a boom box the size of a suitcase, enters the pizza place, egged on by an angry Esposito, and doesn't turn the music down, the crucible is ignited.

Lee was inspired by many racial tragedies in New York City. Michael Stewart and Eleanor Bumpurs are both mentioned by name, while "Howard Beach," a white neighborhood where a black man, Michael Griffiths, was chased onto the highway, leading to his death, is also mentioned. Just after the film was released, Yusef Hawkins, a black man, was killed in Bensonhurst (notably, the home of Aiello's family in Do the Right Thing). Lee examines the factors that can turn from a minor thing to a tragedy so quickly, and what inspires people to act the way they do.

Davis tells Lee early on to "do the right thing." Lee, after Nunn is killed, takes the action of hurling a garbage can through Aiello's window, leading to the place being burned to the ground. The Korean deli across the street is spared when the owners indicates that he is black, too, meaning he is a minority, just like them.

This film is so dazzling on so many levels that an entire book can be written about it. Dickerson's photography is fantastic. The bright red wall that serves as a backdrop to the chorus emphasizes the heat (no one has air conditioning--simple fans and ice cubes are all that keep people cool). The music is effective, too, especially Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," which opens the film (along with Perez's dance moves) and then can be heard on Nunn's boom box.

My only quibble comes with the end. I remember seeing it and thinking it ended when Smiley, a local guy selling photos of the only meeting between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, pins that photo to the wall of Aiello's burning establishment. But no, there's an epilogue, in which Lee meets with Aiello, demanding his pay. I was kind of irked that a slam-bang ending was marred, and by the outrageous act of a man asking for pay after he through a garbage can through his boss's window. But I suppose that closure was needed, as the sun comes up no matter what happens, and an understanding is reached.

Do the Right Thing, as I mentioned, is Lee's best film. He has approached greatness a few times since, most notably with Malcolm X, which I've already reviewed on this blog. I'll be looking at more of his films in the coming weeks.