Spike Lee – Tripping Through Gateways

Organized by Louis Farrakhan, the Million Man March was a march on Washington for black men. The purposed was a reclaiming of roles that some leaders felt had been taken from black men (both through institutional racism and by their own choices). Farrakhan was always a rather controversial figure (mainly due to his tendency towards anti-semitism). But back in the 1990’s he was still seen as a leader for many black Americans.

In 1996, Spike Lee directed a film that chose to explore what was behind the drive for the men who attended. And what Get on the Bus tells us is…It’s Complicated.

Get on the Bus follows several men on a chartered bus ride to attend the Million Man March. The passengers include Evans Sr. and his son “Smooth”, who are (due to a court order) chained together (Lee and writer Reggie Rock Bythewood were not being subtle there). There is Flip, an ego driven and boisterous actor. Xavier is an aspiring director making a documentary. Jamal and Randall are a gay couple whose relationship is at an impasse. And Pops is the sixties radical who seeks to inspire the young men around him.

Spike explores some of the more obvious areas of white racism against the black community. This is highlighted in a sequence with the lone white character in the film, a substitute driver played by Richard Belzer. It is a well done scene because you can both sympathize with Belzer’s Rick and yet cringe as he stumbles through a myriad of attempts to offer a defense. And Charles Dutton’s George (who works with Rick) takes some pity and steps in to defend him and get the others to back off.

But Lee also does not hesitate to turn the camera on issues specific to the black community. There are arguments regarding parenting, the treatment of black women, what it means to be black (one character, Roger, who had a white mother, has his “black cred” challenged). And Lee takes on homophobia among black men pretty directly.

But really, the heart of the film is in both Evan Sr. and his son Smooth and then Pops. Pops is that guy for whom the March is a chance to reclaim those days of past. Days of revolution and the marches for Civil Rights. Offering words of wisdom, he quietly connects himself to these men, resulting in a moment where the men must put aside their differences, their egos and anger to unite. Evan Sr. is a man who knows he has let his son down and desperately wants to correct this.

Get on the Bus could have been unbearably preacher in lesser hands. And I do not mean just Lee here. The cast is excellent. Charles S. Dutton is perfectly cast as the jovial George, who is exuberant in bringing these men together for something he hopes to be a life changing event. Dutton has a friendly authority throughout the film. Andre Braugher is irritating as the boastful Flip…but that is the point. You are never really meant to see his side. He is the selfish man, going to the March more for the image he thinks it will project than any more noble reasons.

Probably the weakest sequence is the over the top Republican character. This is not the fault of actor Wendell Pierce, but rather the fact that the character is less a character and a diversionary gag.

Get on the Bus feels as relevant and challenging today as it was back in 1996.

According to Jordan Peele, it took a bit of work to convince Spike Lee to take on the role of director for this film. Well, not to much… He sent Lee a copy of the memoir of Ron Stallworth, the Black Klansman.

It really is one of those stories that seems so insanely weird it almost cannot be true. But Ron Stallworth is a real guy, the first black police officer in the Colorado Springs Police department. And in the 70’s, itching to advance his career and take down bad guys, he struck up a relationship with the local chapter of the KKK., eventually, this crawled up the ladder to include ongoing conversations with David Duke over the phone.

Of course, there was the little snag that Stallworth is a black man…and that might have stood out a little. And so the dDepartment decides there is a worthwhile investigation here. So, a white officer, Flip Zimmerman, is recruited to play White Ron.

Lee sees how absurd and humorous this appears on the surface. And he plays that up a lot. But Lee also saw something deeper at play…a notion that today, we are seeing some of the same evils bubbling to the surface in the present. And the film is not subtle about it.

John David Washington is terrific. He is both real and performers. What I mean is that his performance can be very personable and real, yet turn on a faithless charm when Ron is playing the Klan for fools. Adam Driver is more muted…there is no real over the top behavior called for here. Washington and Driver have a good chemistry as men who begin as simple co-workers, but develop a strong bond due to needing to…in a manner…share a life.

The supporting cast is excellent. From Laura Harrier to Topher Grace, we get a certain tongue in cheek, but not mere cartoon characters.

Lee uses some real visual flair in the film, adding a bit of a larger than life feel in some scenes. But never at the expense of storytelling.

The film certainly takes some liberties (for example, David Duke did not find out that Ron Stallworth was black until around 2013) and yet, it did not detract from the story overall. Flipp is not a Jewish man in real life, but it added a certain effective story point within the film and gave a bigger story arc for Zimmerman.

Admittedly, the film does seem play it safe. There is only one racist cop, the rest are, at worst, race agnostic. So, the racism functions outside the institution. This has a side effect of making the black activists represented by Harrier’s Patrice Dumas as being to unfair in their perceptions of the law. It is one bad cop, not the whole department.

However, BlacKkKlansman is a very entertaining and thoughtful film, and its shortcomings do not prevent the film from having a real impact.

Tag: Spike Lee

A Million To One (Get On the Bus, 1996)

UnderkKkover Brother (BlacKkKlansman, 2018)