The celebrated director´s latest film fuses past and present, updating the true tale of a black detective who infiltrated the KKK with the racial tensions of 2018 to searing effectSpike Lee had mellowed somewhat. Not that the motormouth director with a socially provocative back catalogue had traded his sneakers for slippers, but in February 2015, having just released vampire romance Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, he was making a documentary about Michael Jackson´s Off the Wall and, he told the Atlantic, time and fatherhood might have softened him. `If you get angry about everything you´re going to give yourself cancer,` he said. `You can´t let anger rule your life. It´s just not productive.` The truth, though, is that anger has been extremely productive for Spike Lee. And a lot has changed since 2015.In February 2017, a month after Donald Trump´s inauguration, Get Out director Jordan Peele was given a screenplay adapted from black police officer Ron Stallworth´s memoir Black Klansman, about his experience infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s - on the phone, then with a white surrogate in the flesh. Lee, thought Peele [who has produced the film], would be ideal to direct it. `Spike just has an ability,` he told the Hollywood Reporter, `to do tension right, to do the moments of levity right, to deliver a social message and a punch.` In August, the Unite the Right rally took place in Charlottesville, followed by the killing of Heather Heyer, and Trump´s `blame on both sides` diatribe. Weeks later, cameras rolled on BlacKkKlansman. `I´ve never been in a movie that came out so fast, from when it was shot,` says Topher Grace, who plays the KKK´s David Duke. `There was this feeling on the set, like: `We´ve gotta get this movie out tomorrow.´` The result is Lee´s most entertaining, accessible and - without a doubt - angriest film in years. Continue reading...
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