Get on the Bus

Getting back to the films of Spike Lee...

In 1996 Lee directed Get on the Bus, a very topical and heartfelt film about the Million Man March, which had taken place in Washington, D.C. the year before. From a script by Reggie Rock Blythewood, the film chronicles the bus ride that a group of African American men take from South Central Los Angeles to the March.

Given that this is a film, and not a documentary, we get a lot of cliches. There is the requisite variety of characters. Granted, most of them are black, but they cover the spectrum: a Muslim who used to be a gangbanger, a cop who is biracial, a father and son who are chained together because of a court order, two gay men who are splitting up, a college kid with a video recorder, a narcissistic actor, and an old man (Ossie Davis), who is able to put everything into perspective.

Some characters come and go. For a while the bus is driven by a white man (Richard Belzer), who is given a hard time, protesting that he is not a racist and his parents worked for the civil rights movement. In Memphis, the bus picks up a car dealer (Wendell Pierce), who turns out to be a Republican who says there is no racism (he also liberally uses the N-word).

The dialogue is very stagey, not unusual given that most of the action takes place on a bus. Each of the main characters has an arc that is completed by the end, though some characters remain in the periphery. Bernie Mac plays a character who is hardly seen, and there is another man on the bus who wears the uniform--black suit, white shirt, bow tie--of the Nation of Islam. Given that Louis Farrakhan is a major subject of the film, it's interesting that this character is given no dialogue, and is merely an extra.

In addition to Davis, many other prominent black actors participate, including Charles Dutton, Andre Braugher, Harry Lennix, Roger Guenver Smith, and Isaiah Washington. Some others in the film are unknown to me, but I must say that Thomas Jefferson Byrd, who plays the father of the chained boy, is terrible, overemphasizing each word like an amateur. The boy who plays his son, De'Aundre Bonds, isn't much better.

Lee uses a light hand here. The opening credits, a Lee specialty, shows images of black men in chains and handcuffs. The only stylistic approach he uses during the film itself is cutting to the video taken by the college kid. Most of the film is divided into set pieces, including some speeches. Some, like the one Davis tells about being passed over for promotions by men he trained, are very touching. Others are way over the top and heavy-handed, such as Dutton's final speech about how black men have to stick together.

Get on the Bus is an interesting film and a notable one in the history of blacks in film, but not a particularly great one.