civil rights

JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE – an icon continues

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John Lewis (on far right) in JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble traces the life of civil rights icon, US Representative John Lewis.  I usually don’t buy reverential biodocs, but when the subject is a freaking saint, I guess you have to go with it.  The rest of the title comes from Lewis’ mantra – if you see injustice, make good trouble, necessary trouble. 

John Lewis, of course, is a real American hero.  As a very young man in 1965, he had been leading efforts to register Blacks to vote in Selma, Alabama, including a peaceful march to the State Capitol in Montgomery.  On March 7, 1965, the march got as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma when they were attached by local law enforcement and Ku Klux Klan members under the command of Sheriff Jim Clark.  Lewis was in the very first rank and was beaten, shedding his own blood on “Bloody Sunday”.  Two subsequent marches on the bridge and the LBJ speech that followed led directly to the Voting Rights Act of 1964, the most important civil rights legislation since 1867. 

In John Lewis: Good Trouble, we see footage from the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  We see a young John Lewis being beaten in 1965, and we see an elderly Lewis in an anniversary march with President Barack Obama and former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

John Lewis: Good Trouble is well-sourced by director Dawn Porter, even though only a few of Lewis’ contemporaries survive.  When the first Black president was elected, Lewis says he wept for JFK, RFK, Dr. King and the others who hadn’t lived to see it.  Fortunately, Lewis has sisters sill alive who participate in the documentary.

We get an inside glimpse at Lewis’ childhood.  We get to see Lewis watching footage of himself at a pivotal Nashville sit-in that he had “never seen”.  And, this intimate portrait shows us some dry Lewis humor and some impressive octogenarian dance moves.

How did Lewis get to Congress?  John Lewis: Good Trouble shows us the race against his longtime friend and fellow Civil Rights icon Julian Bond. My day job is in politics, and I understand that, to win, you have to do what you have to do to win; others may find this episode bracing and unsettling. 

 John Lewis: Good Trouble is an insightful view of a man and of a critical point in American history.  You can stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

DA 5 BLOODS: a few compelling elements

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Isiah Whitlock Jr., Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters, Delroy Lindo and Jonathan Majors in in DA 5 BLOODS. Cr. DAVID LEE/NETFLIX © 2020

Spike Lee’s latest film, Da 5 Bloods has some compelling elements, but the movie isn’t compelling as a whole. It’s too long and drags in places. The Wife and I stopped watching after the first hour. I finished it a couple days later.

Da 5 Bloods works best as a reflection on the Vietnam War and on the Black experience in America; how Spike handles those themes is far more evocative than is the story itself.

The story: four African-American vets return to Vietnam fifty years after their service. They are seeking to recover the remains of their beloved commanding officer. What they keep to themselves, is that he is buried with a fortune in gold bars. This quest is remarkably similar to Treasure of the Sierra Madre (and Spike even throws in the most famous quote from Sierra Madre).

Delroy Lindo in DA 5 BLOODS. Photo courtesy of NETFLIX.

The best reason to watch Da 5 Bloods are the performances of Delroy Lindo and Clarke Peters. Lindo has the best role of his craeer – as a man who is tormented by PTSD from wartime guilt and a family tragedy back home.

The old actors play themselves in the fifty-years-before flashback scenes. I suspended disbelief, but it decidedly did not work for The Wife.

Besides Delroy Lindo’s searing monologues, the highlights of the movie are an unexpected family reunion for the Clarke Peters character and a gripping sequence in a minefield.

The supporting cast is excellent, especially Melanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser, Jean Reno, Le Y Tan and first time actress Sandy Huong Pham, Jonathan Majors, so great in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, is fine but wasted in an underwritten role.

Da 5 Bloods does showcase an impressive selection of soul shakes. Spike also drops in has signature double dolly shot in the epilogue, to effetively cap the Clarke Peters story line.

One of the best things about Da 5 Bloods is the soundtrack; I can’t get enough of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, and neither can Spike. Time Has Come Today by the Chambers Brothers is underused in the movie, but dominates the great trailer embedded below (and the trailer is better than the movie).

Da 5 Bloods is streaming on Netflix.

KING IN THE WILDERNESS: an icon, foundering

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KING IN THE WILDERNESS. Photo by Flip Schulke Archives – ©. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

The superb documentary King in the Wilderness follows Martin Luther King, Jr., through his turbulent final two years. Although King had already become an icon, he was facing the challenges of a new political and societal landscape that King himself had helped create. And he was foundering.

  • King’s approach, which overcame the overt cultural racism and statutory segregation in the South, was not working against the de facto segregation and urban riots in the North. Nor was King gaining traction to expand the movement against bigotry into a movement against poverty.
  • His leadership in the Black community was being usurped by younger, more militant, leaders. Stokely Carmichael and his peers were quick to discard longtime White Civil Rights workers and to alienate White America with a message of Black Power, which resonated in the Black community. King refused to use the weaponized term, while trying to hang on to his base.
  • King was under pressure to make public his opposition to the Vietnam War. King’s strong anti-militarism came naturally from his study of Gandhi and his commitment to non-violence. But campaigning against the War would be seen as a betrayal by King’s most effective ally and benefactor, President Lyndon B. Johnson. King was genuinely grateful to LBJ, and LBJ was famously vindictive.

King was just off the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the two greatest legislative Civil Rights victories since the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery one hundred years before. In King in the Wilderness, it’s only a year later, and Martin Luther King, Jr. is facing a big fat case of What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael in KING IN THE WILDERNESS. Photo by Flip Schulke Archives – ©. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

It’s easy for us to forget just how young King was:

  • He was only 26 when he led the Birmingham Bus Boycott.
  • King wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail and led the the March on Washington at 34.
  • He won the Nobel Peace Prize at 35.
  • He led the march from Selma to Montgomery at 36.

After a great historic victory, it can be difficult to find a new objective. It’s hard to gain political power, and it can be just as hard to keep it. It’s difficult for a public figure to remain relevant in changing times. These are the challenges of leadership.

By focusing on this period of King’s life and career, director Peter Kunhardt and writer Chris Chuang have made an inspired choice. They have also sourced it brilliantly, with the remembrances of King intimates, most notably Andrew Young and Henry Belafonte, along with Stokely Carmichael’s fellow SNCC leader Cleveland Sellers. King family confidante Xernona Clayton bookends the movie with the two most poignant anecdotes.

King in the Wilderness was originally aired on HBO and won an Emmy for best historical documentary. It’s now widely available on streaming platforms.

GREEN BOOK: we get to spend time with Tony Lip!

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Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali in GREEN BOOK

Set in 1962, Green Book is the story of Tony Lip (a burly Viggo Mortensen), an Italian-American bouncer at the Copacabana, who is enlisted to accompany a highbrow African-American musician Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) on a concert tour of the American South.  The title refers to the pamphlet that listed African-American-friendly accommodations in the segregated South.

These guys are an odd couple – one culturally refined and intellectually curious, the other decidedly not.    Tony uses his imposing physical presence, comfort with violence and uncommon chutzpah to navigate life.  Not surprisingly, given his Bronx working class background, he is racist by today’s standard.  Shirley, on the other hand, is a sometimes fastidious Renaissance Man.  Each underestimates the other UNTIL …

Green Book is a great movie because it transcends the odd couple movie formula by probing the depths of these characters.  Tony is irascible and  enjoys disregarding the niceties of rules; early in Green Book, he see him park his car next to a fire hydrant, dump out the contents of a garbage can and then use the can to hood the hydrant.  He knows his way around the world of Wise Guys.  His appetite for his favorite foods (even in mass quantities) is admirable.  He is comfortable in his own skin and resists self-improvement (until he needs some help with romantic letters to his wife).  In Green Book, Tony Lip is not impressed by ANYTHING until he hears Don Shirley play piano.

The hyper-achiever Shirley, in contrast, is decidedly not comfortable in his own skin.  He is isolated from whites by racism and isolated from most blacks culturally.  Shirley is moody – there are multiple roots to his dissatisfaction and unhappiness – and one particular root is revealed later in the film.  Ali’s Shirley flashes an insincere showbiz smile to accept an audience’s applause, but is otherwise obsessed with always maintaining his dignity on his terms.

To their surprise, both men are affected by the other.  As inhabited by Mortensen and Ali, these are two of the most compelling characters in any odd couple movie, road trip movie or civil rights movie.

An early title says that Green Book is “inspired by true story”, and the closing credits show us the real people who are portrayed. Peter Farrelly deserves massive praise for having snagged the rights to this story and recognizing what could be done with it.  Tony Lip is a marvelous character, and Viggo Mortensen’s performance in Green Book is one of the great pleasures of this year in the movies.