Harry Belafonte trained as an actor in New York alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau and Sidney Poitier. He began to sing to pay for his acting classes, and his musical career took off first, singing Jazz and Folk and then pioneering Calypso. Two of his albums sold more than an million copies each and he was a regular guest on American TV shows, a handsome, athletic and intelligent and versatile performer.
Alongside his musical career he acted in big movies such as Island In The Sun, Odds Against Tomorrow, and The World, The Flesh and The Devil. Between 1953 and 2013 he appeared in over 30 movies, many of them documentaries he also produced that demonstrated his political civil rights commitment, starting with King: A Filmed Record, Montgomery to Memphis in 1970, then Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker, We Shall Overcome, Fidel, and the Bobby (Kennedy).
During the Civil Rights struggle in the 50’s and 60’s Belafonte was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s best friends. He provided financial support for King’s family, bailed King out of Birmingham City Jail and raised thousands of dollars to release other civil rights protesters. He financed the 1961 Freedom Rides, supported voter registration drives, and helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington. He later bankrolled the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committeewith $60,000 in cash.
But he was not only committed to work in the USA. In 2001 he supported the campaign against HIV/AIDSin South Africa and was awardedthe Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award by Africare for his efforts. A few years later he was in Kenya working to improve access to education for Black children.
Back home in 2016, Belafonte endorsed Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Primary, saying"I think he represents opportunity, I think he represents a moral imperative, I think he represents a certain kind of truth that's not often evidenced in the course of politics", Belafonte was an honorary co-chair of the Women's March on Washington, on January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as President.
And why am I writing about him now? Because when Belafonte may have thought that his movie career was over Spike Lee came aknocking on his door asking him to appear in BlacKkKlansman– and to play Jerome Turner,an elder statesman of the Civil Rights Movement, passing on the baton to a younger generation. No actor is better qualified to take that roll, and to authenticate it. I think this a fitting tribute to a remarkable man in this remarkable film. It is a tragedy that such a film needs to be made in the 21stcentury. I thank God that we had Spike Lee and his team to make it.
Spike Lee’s new film BlacKkKlansman is based on the true story of Ron Stallward, a Black Policeman in Colorado Springs, who in the 1970’s infiltrated the local Ku Klux Klan and established a relationship with their national leader, David Duke.
Stallward is played by John David Washington. In an interview with Rolling Stone (RS) magazine Spike Lee said “He is Denzel Washington’s first son. That’s a big, big burden. But he’s also his own man. I have a history with him. His first film was Malcolm X. At the end of the movie, when the kids say, “My name is Malcolm X!” He’s one of the kids. He was about six years old.” (an interview with Jamil Smith, 2nd August 2018.)
Adam Driver (from The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the Star Wars movies The Last Jediand The Force Awakens, andPaterson) plays Stallworth’s colleague and co-infiltrator, Flip Zimmerman. Laura Harrier (Spiderman Homecoming) is Patrice Dumas, President of the Colorado Springs Black Students Union, who invites Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael’s adopted name, and played by Corey Hawkins) to talk to her Union members. Attending that talk is Stallsworth’s first undercover role, and he is profoundly moved by what he hears – and also deeply attracted to Patrice. Then, on a whim, he answers an advert looking for KKK recruits, and his telephone persona is warmly accepted, first of all by David Duke, the KKK national leader, (Topher Grace, Venom in Spiderman 3), and then by Walter (Ryan Eggold),the local organiser. Jasper Paakkonen (a leading Finnish actor) plays another KKK member, Felix, and Ashlee Atkinson plays his wife, Connie, a woman as committed to the cause as her husband.
This is necessary and compelling story, told with verve, courage, skill and humour by one of the most gifted and determined film makers in America – of any colour – and one who has always addressed America’s race problem, obliquely or directly. Here he does so head on. And yet this is not a single-sighted movie.
Despite the attitude of the Black characters, most of whom are protesters who have seen and experienced so much Police harassment and brutality and regard the cops as ‘pigs’, the film is not anti-police. Spike Lee has said that the tone of the film was influenced by The French Connection, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon– and that was not just about the 1970’s vibe. Stallworth is proud to be a cop, and proud of the white colleagues who support his work, particularly Zimmerman, who has to stand in for him when actual meetings with the Klan take place, occasions when Stallworth obviously had to stand back, and Zimmerman’s life is in jeopardy. And Zimmerman was Jewish, having to respond to obscene anti-Semitic attitudes and remarks by appearing to go along with them. In one scene he actually outdoes the Klansman who denies that the Holocaust ever took place. ‘Of course it did,’ says Zimmerman, ‘and it was beautiful.’ You cannot see him grit his teeth.
Even though many of the Klansmen are portrayed as stupid, utterly bigoted, blind to America’s true history and criminally violent, they are not demojnised. Walter is a calm, thoughtful man, and Topher Grace plays David Duke as equally reasonable, utterly convinced that God is on his side and he is on God’s side. He does not rant; in fact he is almost charming. For Topher Grace finding the balance between the former KKK leader’s charm and his racial hatred was the toughest challenge. “He’s very charismatic.” Grace has said. “That was the worst part. How seductive he was, how smart he was to put a new face on the Klan, how terrible that’s been for our country.”
In fact the whole film is built on dualities. One is, of course between the neo-Nazis in the 1970’s and the present, and between David Duke and Donald Trump. We will come back to that.
When one of the cops says that the KKK are like a family, ‘sticking together right or wrong’, Stallworth says, ‘Like us, you mean.’ The most transgressively racist cop, however, eventually gets his comeuppance. Just as Stallman has to ‘pass’ as white his colleague Zimmerman, has to ‘pass’ as gentile. Both find themselves examining their own racial/cultural identity for the first time. Zimmerman has to questioning his previous acceptance of anti-Semitic prejudice. Stallworth has to question his role as a Black cop, arguing his point with Patrice, sometimes humorously, sometimes in more earnest as it threatens their relationship.
We also see a chilling scene between Kevin and Connie as they snuggle up in bed and she heartfully thanks him not only for his love, but for giving her life direction.
The dualism is played out most effectively towards the end of the film. At the start of the film we see clips from D.W.Griffiths 1915 Birth of A Nation, the film that glorified and virtually resurrected the KKK. It is being projected onto the face of Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard, (Alex Baldwin) as he splutters his racist rants about America becoming a ‘mongrel nation’ and looking back to when America was great, but as he does so his white face is sometimes ‘blacked up’ by the very film he is using. Spike Lee said in the Rolling Stone interview “My problem is that as far as ‘Birth of a Nation’ goes, we were told D.W. Griffith is the father of cinema, but other stuff got left out,” he said. “We were never told as students that this film gave a rebirth to the Klan; the KKKhad been dormant.” Lee made a short film drawing attention to this, an was nearly thrown out of film school for it.
And then towards the end of this film we see the 1970’s Klan members as they watch Birth Of A Nation again, obviously a regular and festive occurrence for them, as they whoop and holler at the scenes of White on Black violence. Lee intercuts this with a gathering of a Black students and activists as they sit quietly at the feet of Jerome Turner, the veteran activist played by Harry Belafonte, and he tells the tragic tale of the lynching of Jesse Washington in 1916 - just a year after the release of Birth Of A Nation. Here Spike Lee uses the crosscutting technique pioneered by Griffith - a rather subtle revenge. Every movement needs ‘foundation stories’ and here their juxtaposition is deeply disturbing and revelatory.
But then we see shots from the white supremacists rally in Charlottesville in 2017, footage that includes shocking images of anti-racism activist Heather Heyer being mowed down and killed. In that same Rolling Stone Interview Lee said “We were in preproduction when Charlottesville happened. I was watching TV, my brother Anderson Cooper. Agent Orange”— his nickname for President Trump — “the Klan, the alt right, David Duke. They wrote the ending.” “I knew that was going to be the ending. I first needed to ask Ms. Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, for permission. This is someone whose daughter has been murdered in an American act of terrorism — home-grown, apple-pie, hot-dog, baseball, cotton-candy Americana. Ms. Bro no longer has a daughter because an American terrorist drove that car down that crowded street. And even people who know that thing is coming, when they see it, it’s like, very quiet. People sit there and listen to Prince singing a Negro spiritual, “Mary Don’t You Weep.” Did you hear the song at the end?” (RS) He went to say, “This thing is not just about the United States of America. This is happening all over Europe: Britain, France, Italy, the rise of neo-Nazis in Germany. I want people to understand that. This rise of right-wing, fascist groups is not just an American phenomenon.” (RS)
BlacKkKlansman's musical director was Terence Blanchard, a prolific jazz composer, who scored Talk to Me, Inside Man, Summer of Samand many others. Chayse Irwin, cinematographer shot Beyoncé’s Lemonade, and has collaborated with Kahlil Joseph in many award winning art projects. It was edited by Barry Alexander Brown, the Englishman who has edited Lee’s films all the way back to Do The Right Thing 1989.
No film can ever be perfect, and one as controversial as this is bound to be closely scrutinised by those who agree and who disagree with its premises. Toby Young wrote in the right-wing British paper The Mail that 'Spike Lee fails to include elements that might make his film entertaining — such as plot, character development, romance, action and suspense.' Well, he would, wouldn’t he. In fact Young has named the very elements that I think the film handles well. The plot, while being to some extent fictionalised and dramatized, moves swiftly, with few narrative hiccups. The two main characters, Stallworth and Zimmerman do indeed develop as their story progresses. The romance between Roy and Patrice could have been given more emphasis – and I am sure some would have wanted it to be more explicit – but the film makes the point that both of these people’s commitment to their cause – or rather to how they would work for the same cause – divided rather than united them. And there is certainly action and suspense galore.
Some who are in sympathy with Spike Lee’s intent may think as they are watching this movie that he has treated his subject too lightly, with too much humour, too many tropes from conventional thrillers. I do not think that opinion will survive the end of the film. Lee has set us up for a sucker punch, and when it comes it is a knockout blow.
The acting, direction, soundtrack, cinematography and editing come together to make a film that will – or ought to – engage move and shock us all when we see the present day Duke and Trump. Duke admiring Trump, Trump refusing to condemn the Charlottesville neo-Nazi murderous violence.
Earlier on we have seen Roy talking with his boss, Sergeant Trapp (Ken Garito), who believes that Duke and his allies are developing an electoral strategy based on ‘potent, divisive issues like immigration, affirmative action and tax reform that could eventually lead to the White House.’ Ron laughs. He sees the Klan as dangerous, but also ridiculous.“America would never elect somebody like David Duke president,” he says. The sergeant asks, “Why don’t you wake up?”
Spike Lee has said“I’m going to go back to “Wake up.” That’s been in almost all my films. Wake up. Be alert. Don’t fall asleep. Don’t go for the okeydokey. Don’t go for the shenanigans, subterfuge and skulduggery. Don’t go for it. Let’s make the best of the time we have on this earth, and not get into this hate and all this other bullshit.” This film is not about the need for Black Power, but for‘power to all the people,’ as Kwame Ture says.
The BBC program Panorama broadcast on the 12 September 2018, looking at Black Power in America, retells some of the stories of Police killings of Black men, stories that lead many African-Americans to arm themselves in self-protection. It seems that if you are a Black American man aged between 15 and 34 you stand 11 times the risk of being shot by the Police than if you are White. In 2015 1100 Black Americans were killed by Police Officers. In that same period the British Police shot dead 4 people.
In 2015 the number of KKK clans more than doubled, from around 70 to 190. But Dan Murdock, who made the program concluded that “Many of the Black Americans I met felt little fear from the white men burning crosses in the woods. To them White Supremacy is a system of oppression that stretches through politics, education, the prisons and the economy, but most obviously through the policing.”
It is a tragedy that this film needed to be made in the 21stcentury. I thank God that we had Spike Lee and his team to make it – and not to turn it into an anti-racist rant, but into a genuinely engaging and entertaining story that nonetheless tells appalling and abiding truths.
