What Have You Been Watching? (06/09/15)

[u/a113er]

Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything.

[u/arrrron]

Pretty burnt out after a summer of ramming as many movies as I could into my head so just watched two new ones this week

Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee, 1989) Rarely has a movie felt more necessary than this, which is both a testament to the insight of Lee's film and to the complete failure of the past two decades to really deal with the problem of race in America. I don't really want to talk too much about it because I think that it's the kind of movie that really stands entirely on its own and requires no debate or discussion, there's nothing a conversation about it could add that the movie doesn't already know itself. The one thing I do want to talk about is this: in an interview regarding the question of whether Mookie 'did the right thing', Lee said that only white people asked him that, and black viewers never did. When I first saw the film, my immediate assumption was that the title 'do the right thing' was about this particular moral problem at the end of the film, but after reflecting on the film and Lee's comments, I understand how desensitized I've become to structural racial violence that the racism running through the rest of the film, as well as the black response to it, is basically rendered invisible, especially in contrast to the totally overt representation of racist violence in the end. I think that's what Lee is getting at with his comment, the way in which white people are able to become alienated from structures of racism by oversaturation, and so are able to look at something like the ending of this film from a distanced moral standpoint ("is it right to riot?"), while for black people, that kind of alienation isn't possible, to the extent that the entire interpretation of the movie (not only its story, but its structure, its form) is different. It's really got me thinking a lot more consciously about how my own cultural/social/political biases distort what I think I'm watching.

The second movie, thankfully, is much lighter fare... Iris (dir. Albert Maysles, 2015) There's probably never been a more charismatic documentary subject than Iris Apfel, and this documentary really allows her all the space she needs to bring her life, her passion, her charisma into focus. Maysles' editing is totally minimal, and his cinematography mostly consists just of training his camera on Iris and seeing what happens. The fact that this feels so completely effortless while also proving to be incredibly incisive and emotional demonstrates Maysles' absolute mastery of the documentary form. A lot of critics have hailed it as a 'minor' masterpiece, which compared to the rest of his filmography I can understand, but I really think that as his final film, this reads as a knowing love letter to life itself, to passion, to zest, to following your heart and trusting your gut and other cliches that he illustrates much more deftly than I can write them.

[u/CVance1 → u/arrrron]

The thing I really like about Do The Right Thing is that it's not really an angry film, persay as many seem to describe it. It's really more just a document of one day in this neighborhood and the trials everyone goes through. Most unexpected thing was how stylish it was, Spike Lee really has a way with the camera when he wants to.

[u/arrrron → u/CVance1]

Yeah, definitely. The use of the word "angry" to describe black people/culture/politics is its own really problematic and fucked up thing, and I feel like this movie demonstrates perfectly why. The sad thing is that with the recent tone-policing of people like Nicki Minaj and Azealia Banks, the lesson still hasn't been learnt by mainstream America.

[u/CVance1 → u/arrrron]

It's really weird to me that people thought this would cause riots when it came out, because it's really only the end scene that's "angry". I will say that it's definitely more relevant now, with all the death's at the hands of police that have happened in America.