Chi-Raq (2015)
Directed by: Spike
Lee.
Written by: Spike Lee
& Kevin Willmott based on the play by Aristophanes.
Starring: Teyonah Parris (Lysistrata),
Nick Cannon (Chi-Raq), Wesley Snipes (Cyclops), Angela Bassett (Miss Helen), Samuel
L. Jackson (Dolmedes), John Cusack (Father Mike Corridan), Jennifer Hudson (Irene),
David Patrick Kelly (General King Kong), D.B. Sweeney (Mayor McCloud), Dave
Chappelle (Morris), Steve Harris (Old Duke), Harry Lennix (Commissioner
Blades).
No matter
what you think of Chi-Raq – and this is one of those films where the reactions
are all over the place – I don’t think you can fault Spike Lee for not being
ambitious enough when he made the film. It is a film about the crisis in
Chicago – where gang violence takes victims every day, both ones directly
involved in the gangs, and those who are just trying to live in their lives in
the dangerous streets. I’m not quite sure why Lee – and co-writer Kevin Willmott
– chose to address this issue by adapting a play written a couple thousand
years ago, by Aristophanes, or why they felt the need to write the whole movie
in rhyming verse, or why they also chose to make the film both a full-fledged
musical and a demented comedy. That the film can be all of those things, and
also be a painful howl of rage is more than a little bit remarkable. As I said
with a few other films of Lee’s over the course of this series, you may well
hate Chi-Raq – but dammit, you’re not going to forget it.
The
Jean-Luc Godard inspired opening has you sit there and listen to the title song
of the movie play out in full, as the lyrics flash onto the screen. The song is
angry at the state of Chicago, and saddened at the same time. It will set the
tone for the rest of the movie. We are then introduced to Dolmedes (Samuel L.
Jackson), our narrator, who will explain why the rest of the film will be
spoken in verse, and introduce us to the rest of the characters – he doesn’t
have a role beyond doing this throughout the film, and yet it remains one of
Jackson’s best performances for Lee – a kind of profane, extended rant that
evokes everything from the play they are basing it on, to Patton. The main
character will be Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris), the girlfriend of Chi-Raq (Nick
Cannon), a rapper and a leader of one of the two gangs doing all the fighting
in Chicago. An energetic performance – complete with large scale choreography
by the crowd in the club – is ended when gunshots ring out – and people are
left on the ground bleeding. This doesn’t much bother either Chi-Raq or
Lysistrata – it doesn’t stop them from having sex when they get back home. But
two events will get Lysistrata thinking – the first is when their house is
burned down, and she’s forced to move out for a little while, and in with Miss
Helen (Angela Bassett), who activates her conscience. And the second is she
sees Irene (Jennifer Hudson), wailing in pain at the site where her little girl
was murdered – a victim because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Lee stays with Irene for a long time at that scene – as she tries to scrub the
blood off the pavement. Lysistrata’s idea on how to stop the violence is simple
– the women will stop having sex with their men until they make peace. She gets
a remarkable level of buy-in.
Tonally
speaking, Chi-Raq is deliberately all over the place. There are scenes of
sadness – like Irene scrubbing the blood of her daughter off the pavement,
scenes of pure anger – a remarkable, and long, sermon at the daughter’s funeral
delivered by John Cusack (curious choice, but it works) as he goes after
everyone from the gangs to the politicians to the police to the NRA. There are
almost moments of pure comedy – Dave Chappelle shows up for one scene as a strip
club owner, explaining that the strippers are honoring the strike, and as such,
there is no dancing going on. There are ecstatic musical numbers throughout the
film – and a brilliant set piece near the end, when Chi-Raq and Lysistrata get
together to try and see who can outlast the other, as he is trying to bring the
strike (and, by that point, the women’s occupation of the armory) to a halt –
all on a bed set up as if on stage. The performances, as a result, run the
gamut as well – from Cannon’s more serious role, to Wesley Snipes high pitched
giggling psycho as his rival. Best of all is Parris, who somehow anchors the
movie, and makes the tonal shifts work. It’s a short list of female protagonists
in Lee films – but hers is clearly the best, most well-rounded of them all.
I
honestly don’t know what precisely Lee was trying to accomplish with this film.
He doesn’t give any real solutions to the problems presented here – they aren’t
any easy ones, and Lee doesn’t pretend there are any (even if, he gives the
film a relatively upbeat ending). If he wanted to reach more people with his
howl of rage, he wouldn’t have wrapped in musical numbers and comedy, and
written the whole thing in verse. Yet the whole movie is completely and totally
fascinating, and also one of the most entertaining films Lee has made in years.
With a film like this, there is no way it was going to be perfect – there are
certainly flaws, although I think many may disagree on what they are. But it is
an energetic film – a powerful one, and an entertaining one. And one only Spike
Lee would even attempt to make.
No comments:
Post a Comment