Movie: Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee, 2020)
Firting with Hedy (Melanie Thierry) a white peace worker in Vietnam, David (Jonathan Majors) gets ironically ceremonial: "We plead innocent to all charges, claims, accusations, allegations, and associations connected to the Klansman in the Oval Office. so help me God." His attractive alliterations however can't conceal that his dad Paul (Delroy Lindo) is spending their entire trip with his red Make America Great Again hat on full display. Paul has come to the Vietnamese jungle with three other black war veterans to find the remains of their fallen squad leader, and the gold he buried. His son's romantic prospects have to take a backseat to that mission, and when his paranoia, resentment and long-buried memories result in the kidnapping of Hedy and her equally white colleagues, David has to choose between his blood and his conscience. Psychological battles lead to real ones, when the American end up in a gunfight with French mercenaries, destroying part of the Vietnamese jungle, and killing several Vietnamese on either side.
On top of all this, Da 5 Bloods ends with Black Lives Matter receiving a fortune that would have stayed in Vietnamese hands if it wasn't for the Americans' violent return to Vietnam, and yet when Da 5 Bloods came out certain corners of the internet accused Spike Lee of ignoring American imperalism and the role black Americans play in it. These cricisms are partly the result of people's continued misunderstanding of Spike Lee - the man loves America! Da 5 Bloods starts with a montage of 1960's upheaval approvingly citing Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Kwame Ture, Muhammad Ali, and their radical, communist ideals connecting the civil rights movement to the Vietnamese resistance, leaving no doubt that America's atrocities abroad and at home were (and still are) the result of atrocious idelogies inherent to American society. But Marvin Gaye is equally inherent to American society, And so are The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Martin Luther King, Edwin Moses, Barack Obama and the classic Hollywood of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Hedy Lamarr. Spike Lee loves all that, and as he has rightly pointed out in many interviews, aside from the USA, there are very few places where minorities have gotten so many opportunities to build a life on their own terms, and to express themselves, let alone to do so in ways that go against the dominant cultural narratives. Indeed, even now that the rest of Europe is becoming more diverse, and that we have more serious discussions about our colonial past it's hard to imagine any black filmmaker emerging here who wil be as honest, as influential and as beloved as Spike Lee.
And so Da 5 Bloods does not merely aim to criticise an immoral war and its exploitation of black American soldiers. It is also interested in using the Vietnam War to see how it could look like to reconcile the civil rights movements with mainstream American culture. The film ends with Martin Luther King saying "I say it plain, America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath, America will be." He is quoting a rather wonderful poem by Langston Hughes that lists all the great promises and opportunities America is offering, only to be constantly repudiated by members of various oppressed groups explaining why and how they have been excluded from these. In the end the oppressed people all speak as one, expressing their intention to turn America into a country that fulfills its promise to all its people. America is not there yet, but how would an American war epic about the experiences of black soldiers look like if it were? It would definitely not speak exclusively the language of black leftist radicalism/pacifism, but it would also feature shots of helicopters descending against the backdrop of a romanticised sunset. It would feature epic gun battles with close ups of black soldiers heroically shooting machine guns, the camera slowly circling around their position on the battlefield showing us how they always have each others' backs. It would have scenes breaking the fourth wall in which the Vietnamese jungle becomes a mere theatrical backdrop for personal expressions through Shakespearean monologues. It would have shootouts in isolated outposts where wounded Rambo's summon their last remaining energy for one final heroic act that saves themselves and their comrades. And all of this would be surrounded by jabs, taunts, wisecracks and all kinds of other cool dialogue, and a soundtrack filled with Marvin Gaye songs.
Though most of this is incredibly entertaining, a lot of the movie is very consciously in the spirit of Willem Dafoe's famous death scene in Platoon. That moment, bloated in heavyheanded grandiosity and symbolism was when I fully gave up on that film, and especially on my first viewing of Da 5 Bloods I was actively annoyed by some of it. Yet, it can't be denied that there is a clear aesthetic purpose to this approach that contributes to the film's oddness, subversiveness and sheer ambition. Lee knows that America is not yet America to its black population, but this film is about how the country is on its path to become that, how it presents itself as being much further than it really is, how that shapes how the rest of the world looks at black Americans, and how black Americanse see themselves in the context of the rest of the world, and and how all of this adds a further complication to the struggle for black liberation and emancipation. More equality means more responsibility (sometimes unfairly so!) for America's sins.
Kamala Harris will experience all of this soon enough, but much lighter contexts also showcase how far ahead of his time Spike Lee continues to be. One year after this film came out, England at long last reached the final of a major football championship, only to lose on penalties to Italy. The penalties were missed by Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jaden Sancho, three of its black players. Especially the first two were instrumental in England's great tournament and the newfound joy surrounding the national team. England's mostly white fans responded to this by taking the dust off their hit single Football's Coming Home, which in the minds of many European football fans became a symbol of the broader English insularity and arrogance, especially in the context of Brexit. Many of these fans tried to reconcile their enjoyment of the exploits of Rashford and co by actively disconnecting them from these expressions of English identity, while the players themselves actively tried to present themselves as proud wearers of the shirt representing Englishness. After the final this dynamic was turned on its head, when British racists issued death threaths and questioned the Englishness of the faulty penalty takers. The fact that the final was played in London at Wembley stadium, which has become one of the key symbols of the globalisation of international football, is almost as much on the nose as Da 5 Bloods' black veterans opening the film partying in an (apparently really existing) Apocalypse Now-themed bar in Ho Chi Minh City. Once they exit the bar, the first thing we see are the bright lights of McDonald's and other American multinationals. It'll be the only thing we'll see of Vietnam's capital.
