WARNING: There are SPOILERS ahead for BlacKKKlansman. So if you haven’t seen Spike Lee’s outrageous and integral biopic of Ron Stallworth then you shouldn’t proceed.
“BlacKkKlansman” is an outrageously enjoyable film that is packed with moments of hilarity, suspense, poignancy and drama.
At the same time it is also extremely timely and thought-provoking, as it revolves around African-American detective Ron Stallworth infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan.
But the most powerful moment of “BlacKkKlansman” is undoubtedly its conclusion, as director Spike Lee cuts to real-life footage from the Charlottesville rally in August, 2017, when members of the far-right violently clashed with counter-protestors.
Heather D. Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal from Charlottesville, who was one of the counter-protestors, was killed when a man drove his car into a crowd of people. At the end of “BlacKkKlansman” Lee shows footage of this collision, which also injured 19 other people, which he mixes with clips of Donald Trump failing to denounce the white nationalists.
It is a shocking and powerful bit of filmmaking, which John David Washington, who plays Stallworth, was especially surprised to see because he had no idea it would be included.
“I didn’t know he was going to put that in there. So, unbeknownst to us, when you see it, I guess it changed my emotions. Because I went through so many.”
“Even when you watch the film you go through so many different emotions. You don’t know why you are laughing sometimes, then you get quiet, then you get angry, then you feel good towards the end, and then all of sudden it is Bang! Reality. By the way we are living this folks.”
“Spike Lee wasn’t suggestive in his filmmaking. He wasn’t yelling to the audience, ‘Message! Message! Lesson!’ It was more like, ‘This is how we are living right now. And this is how we have been living for decades. So what is the difference now?’”
“And that is up to the audience. He is not saying we are gonna tell you the difference, we are not gonna tell you what is wrong, we are gonna display these things as actual events and hopefully y’all will get to talk about it. Y’all should talk about it.”
“BlacKkKlansman” is now in cinemas.
