I’m a
little embarrassed to admit that this is my first Spike Lee movie I’ve. I’d been vaguely aware of it, but it was
back-to-back Daily Show interviews
with Spike Lee and Nick Cannon that made me go, “Whoa, I need to see this!”
Naturally, it never came to my local theater, and the city an hour+
drive from my house only had it before about two weeks, so I missed it on the
big screen. Netflix just got it on DVD,
though, and I snatched it up the first chance I got.
A
modern retelling of an Aristophanes play, Chi-Raq
takes place in Chicago, where gang-related shootings have ended more American
lives than both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The fighting here is focused on two Southside gangs, the Spartans and
the Trojans. Desperate to put a stop to
the violence, Lysistrata, the girlfriend of the Spartan leader Chi-Raq, decides
to go on a “sex strike” from her man until he agrees to lay down arms, and she
enlists women from both the Spartan and Trojan sides, as well as women all over
Chicago and beyond, to join the cause.
This
being my first Spike Lee movie, I don’t know how it compares to his other work,
so we’ll stick to the story at hand. I
thought this film was a pretty singular experience. It looks amazing, with its very purposeful
color scheme, dramatically-framed shots, and semi-musical flair with some
movements choreographed or synced to the beat of the soundtrack. Most of the characters somehow seem archetypal while feeling really specific. They carry the story with stylish but earnest
vibrancy. The satire is fun, while the
commentary sometimes meanders between insightful and overly pointed; at times,
it feels a bit too “tell, not show.” I
can see how the film might be labeled “preachy,” but at the same time, there’s
a real rawness to it. This is a sleek,
precisely-penned movie, and yet it’s also an urgent voice shouting and sick of
not being heard.
A lot
of flavor is drawn from the source material.
There are the cheeky reference, like the eye-patch-wearing Trojan leader
Cyclops and the jokes about a young Chicagoan named Oedipus, and we have a
one-man Greek chorus in the form of dapper Dolmedes. More notably, however, much of the dialogue
is written in verse. First of all, this
is really striking and makes the film stand out from most standard fare. Overall, I think the device has its pros and
cons. It allows for some really dazzling
lines with stunningly-phrased truth bombs and extremely clever rhyming. That said, a huge chunk of the delivery falls
into something of a sing-song cadence that keeps the dialogue from really
feeling spoken. There are times when the rhythm flows more
tightly, usually by someone emphasizing the beat just a bit more or a bit less
than the general tempo, and then it’s like magic. Throughout too much of the film, though, it’s
at a not-quite-right place somewhere in between, which makes it come across as
a little too consciously written.
As
Lysistrata and Chi-Raq, both Teyonah Parris and Nick Cannon are great. I especially love Lysistrata, a potent cross
between brilliant, fierce, passionate, and smooth. Further props go to Angela Bassett as a neighborhood
woman and Samuel L. Jackson as Dolmedes.
Also featured are John Cusack, Jennifer Hudson, Harry Lennix (Boyd from Dollhouse,) and Dave Chappelle.
Warnings
No comments:
Post a Comment