| BlacKkKlansman | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Spike Lee |
| Written by |
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| Based on | Black Klansman byRon Stallworth |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Chayse Irvin |
| Edited by | Barry Alexander Brown |
| Music by | Terence Blanchard |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 135 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $15 million[1] |
| Box office | $93.4 million[1] |
BlacKkKlansman is a 2018 Americanbiographicalcrimecomedy-drama film directed bySpike Lee and written byCharlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz,Kevin Willmott and Lee, loosely based on the 2014 memoirBlack Klansman byRon Stallworth. The film starsJohn David Washington as Stallworth, along withAdam Driver,Laura Harrier, andTopher Grace. It also featuresHarry Belafonte's last performance before his death in April 2023. Set in the 1970s inColorado Springs,Colorado, it follows the firstAfrican-American detective in thecity's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the localKu Klux Klan chapter.
The film was produced by Lee, Raymond Mansfield, Shaun Redick,Sean McKittrick,Jason Blum, andJordan Peele. It was packaged by Andy Frances, Stallworth's manager. QC Entertainment purchased the film rights to the book in 2015.[2] Lee signed on as director in September 2017. Much of the cast joined the following month, and filming began inNew York State.
BlacKkKlansman premiered on May 14, 2018, at theCannes Film Festival, where it won theGrand Prix. It was theatrically released in the United States on August 10, 2018, a day before the first anniversary of theUnite the Right rally inCharlottesville, Virginia.
The film received critical acclaim, with praise for Lee's direction, the performances (particularly of Washington and Driver), and timely themes. Critics noted it as a return to form for Lee. It received six nominations at the91st Academy Awards, includingBest Picture,Best Director (Lee's first directing nomination), andBest Supporting Actor for Driver. It won forBest Adapted Screenplay, Lee's first competitive Academy Award. TheAmerican Film Institute also selected it as one of thetop 10 films of 2018. At the76th Golden Globe Awards, it earned four nominations, includingBest Motion Picture – Drama.
In 1972,Ron Stallworth is hired as the firstblack officer in theColorado Springs Police Department. Assigned to work in the records room, he tires of being bullied and applies to be anundercover officer. His request is approved and he is assigned to infiltrate a local rally where nationalcivil rights leaderKwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael) is speaking. At the rally, Stallworth meets Patrice Dumas, president of theBlack Student Union atColorado College. While taking Ture to hishotel, Patrice is stopped by patrolman Andy Landers, aracist officer in Stallworth's precinct, who threatens Ture andgropes Patrice.
Following the rally, Stallworth is reassigned to the intelligence division. After reading about a local division of theKu Klux Klan in the newspaper, he calls posing as awhite man. He speaks with Walter Breachway, the president of the Colorado Springs chapter, but soon realizes that not only did he use his real name, but he must also meet the Klan members. Stallworth recruits hisJewish coworker, Flip Zimmerman, toimpersonate him and meet the KKK members while he continues posing as white on the phone. Under Stallworth's identity, Zimmerman meets Breachway, the slightly more reckless and unstable Felix Kendrickson (and later his wife Connie), and Ivanhoe, who cryptically refers to an upcomingterrorist attack.
Calling Ku Klux Klan headquarters inLouisiana to expedite his membership, Stallworth begins regular phone conversations withGrand WizardDavid Duke. Kendrickson suspects Zimmerman of being Jewish and tries to force him to take apolygraph test at gunpoint, but Stallworth, overhearing everything on thewire Zimmerman is wearing, smashes the Kendricksons' kitchen window as a distraction. Stallworth begins dating Patrice without telling her that he is a police officer. After passing information to theArmy CID about active-duty members, he learns from anFBI agent that two members are personnel stationed atNORAD, a critical, high-security defense facility.
Duke visits Colorado Springs for Stallworth's induction into the Klan. Over thereal Stallworth's protests, the detective is assigned to a protection detail for Duke. Once Zimmerman, masquerading as Stallworth, is initiated, Connie Kendrickson leaves the ceremony to place a bomb at a local civil rights rally. Thereal Stallworth realizes her intentions and alerts local police officers. When Connie notices a heavy police presence at the rally, she puts Felix's secondary plan into action and plants the device at Dumas's house, leaving it under her car when it will not fit into the mailbox. Stallworth tackles her as she tries to flee, but uniformed officers detain and beat him despite his protests that he is a covert police employee.
The bombmaker, Walker, had recognized Zimmerman from a prior arrest and informed Felix at the Klan reception. He, Felix, and Ivanhoe drive to Dumas's house and park next to her car without realizing that the device is hidden underneath. When they detonate it, the explosion kills all three. Zimmerman arrives, frees Stallworth, and arrests Connie.
While Stallworth is celebrating the closed case that night with Patrice, Landers arrives and drunkenly harasses the two, remorselessly admitting to his assault on Patrice. Stallworth reveals he is wearing a wire, and Police Chief Bridges arrives and arrests Landers forpolice brutality. Bridges congratulates the team for their success but orders them to end their investigation and destroy the records. Stallworth receives a call from Duke, and he insultingly tells Duke he is black before hanging up. Later while Dumas and Stallworth discuss their future, they are interrupted by a knock on the door. Through the window in the hallway, they see aflaming cross on a hillside surrounded by KKK members.
The film cuts to footage of the 2017Unite the Right rally, thehit and run attack that killed and injured counter-protesters, part of a speech by David Duke, and comments by PresidentDonald Trump. It ends with a dedication to Heather Heyer (who was killed in the attack) and lastly, shows an upside-downAmerican flag fading to a black-and-white American flag, before fading to black.
In July 2015, screenwriters/co-producersCharlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz discovered the bookBlack Klansman byRon Stallworth. They interviewed Stallworth and wrote aspec screenplay, thenpitched the script to producers Shaun Redick and Ray Mansfield.[3] They brought the property to QC Entertainment, which had co-produced the successful 2017 filmGet Out. QC again teamed up withJason Blum's companyBlumhouse Productions, andJordan Peele's companyMonkeypaw Productions, to produce the project.[4][5]
In September of that year,Spike Lee signed on as director andJohn David Washington was in negotiations to star.[6] The following month,Adam Driver,Laura Harrier,Topher Grace, andCorey Hawkins had joined the cast.[5][7][8][9] In November,Paul Walter Hauser,Jasper Pääkkönen, andRyan Eggold joined the cast,[10][11][12] withAshlie Atkinson joining a month later.[13]
Filming began in October 2017.[14]Ossining, New York, was one location used in October.[15] Filming locations also included theRockland County hamlet ofGarnerville, New York, where exterior shots of one of the Colorado Springs police stations were filmed.[16]
Harry Belafonte appears in the film in a cameo (and in his final film role) as an activist recounting thelynching of Jesse Washington; according to Lee, he commanded his crew on the day of filming Belafonte's scene to dress for the occasion in suits and dresses to honor Belafonte.[16]
Lee ends the film with a tribute to anti-fascist counter-protesterHeather Heyer, who was killed on August 12, 2017, in theCharlottesville car attack during theUnite the Right rally.[17]
On April 12, 2018, the film was selected to compete for thePalme d'Or at the2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered on May 14.[18][19] It opened in the United States on August 10, 2018, which was chosen to coincide with the one-year anniversary of theCharlottesville rally.[20]
BlacKkKlansman grossed $49.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $44.1 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $93.4 million, against a production budget of $15 million.[1]
In the United States and Canada,BlacKkKlansman was released, and was projected to gross around $10 million from 1,512 theaters in its opening weekend.[21] It made $3.6 million on its first day (including $670,000 from Thursday night previews).[22] It went on to debut to $10.8 million, finishing fifth at the box office and marking Lee's best opening weekend sinceInside Man ($29 million) in 2006.[23] It made $7.4 million in its second weekend and $5.3 million in its third, finishing seventh and eighth, respectively.[24][25]
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 96% based on 450 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "BlacKkKlansman uses history to offer bitingly trenchant commentary on current events—and brings out some of Spike Lee's hardest-hitting work in decades along the way."[26] OnMetacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[27] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, whilePostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 85% positive score and a 67% "definite recommend".[23]
Peter Bradshaw ofThe Guardian gave the film three out of five stars, writing: "It's an entertaining spectacle but the brilliant tonal balance in something like Jordan Peele's satireGet Out leaves this looking a little exposed. Yet it responds fiercely, contemptuously to the crassness at the heart of the Trump regime and gleefully pays it back in its own coin".[28] ForIndieWire, David Ehrlich gave the film a grade of "B+" and wrote that it is "far more frightening than it is funny", and "packages such weighty and ultra-relevant subjects into the form of a wildly uneven but consistently entertaining night at the movies".[29]
A. O. Scott, writing forThe New York Times, saw the film as both political and provocative in opening up discussion on timely subject matter following Charlottesville. He stated, "Committed anti-racists can sit quietly or laugh politely when hateful things are said. Epithets uttered in irony can be repeated in earnest. The most shocking thing about Flip's (Adam Driver's undercover detective role) imposture is how easy it seems, how natural he looks and sounds. This unnerving authenticity is partly testament to Mr. Driver's ability to tuck one performance inside another, but it also testifies to a stark and discomforting truth. Maybe not everyone who is white is a racist, but racism is what makes us white. Don't sleep on this movie."[30]
In his review of the film forVulture,David Edelstein found the film to be a potent antidote for previous films that Lee sees as unduly supportive of the racist viewpoint in the past, such as Griffith'sThe Birth of a Nation. Edelstein stated: "Lee himself has a propagandist streak, and he knows nothing ever sold the message of white emasculation and the existential necessity of keeping blacks down as well as Griffith's 1915 film. It revived the Klan and—insult to injury—is still reckoned a landmark of narrativefilmmaking. If there were no other reason to makeBlackkKlansman, this one would be good enough."[31]
FilmmakerMartin Scorsese praised the film, saying "The picture takes you to a safe place — we're watching a movie, it's up on a screen — and suddenly we're catapulted into now ... Right next to you. Because it's not only real, what you're seeing up there on the screen — it's happening. It is happening. And it's sanctioned by government...It transcends the medium, what he did there in the last 10 minutes. It's cinema and it's beautiful."[32]
FilmmakerBoots Riley, whose feature film debutSorry to Bother You also premiered in 2018, criticized the film for its political perspective.[33] While Riley called the craft of the film "masterful" and cited Lee as a major influence on his own work, he felt that the film was dishonestly marketed as a true story and criticized its attempts to "make a cop the protagonist in the fight against racist oppression", when Black Americans face structural racism "from the police on a day-to-day basis". In particular, Riley alleged that the film glossed over Stallworth's time spent working forCOINTELPRO to "sabotage a Black radical organization" and objected to the film's choices to portray Stallworth's partner as Jewish and to fictionalize a bombing "to make the police seem like heroes".[34][35][36] Lee responded in an interview withThe Times on August 24, stating that while his films "have been very critical of the police ... I'm never going to say that all police are corrupt, that all police hate people of color."[37][38]
BlacKkKlansman won theGrand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.[39] It was subsequently nominated for fourGolden Globes, includingBest Motion Picture – Drama.[40] Lee was nominated forOutstanding Feature Film by theDirectors Guild of America and the producers were nominated for theProducers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture.[41][42]
The film was also nominated for fourCritics Choice Awards, includingBest Picture,[43] sevenSatellite Awards, includingBest Director for Lee,[44] and is nominated for theIndependent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for Driver,[45] and threeScreen Actors Guild Awards, includingOutstanding Male Actor for Washington.[46] TheAmerican Film Institute also included it in its Top 10 Films of the Year.[47]
BlacKkKlansman was nominated for sixAcademy Awards and wonBest Adapted Screenplay. Nominations includedBest Picture, Lee forBest Director, and Driver forBest Supporting Actor. The film was also nominated forBest Film Editing and composerTerence Blanchard was nominated forBest Original Score.[48]
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Although based on a true story, the film dramatizes and fictionalizes several events, with usage of fictional characters and altered timelines.[49][50] A few examples include; even though the underlying conversation about bombing was real, no bombing actually took place.[51][52] Stallworth was a law enforcement officer, not an activist. The film also features an entirely different detective who infiltrates the KKK instead of the real detective's Jewish partner.[51]
