288. Claudine

Song  - Think (Aretha Franklin)

Movie: Claudine (John Berry, 1974)

Some may scoff at the scene in which Claudine (Diahann Carroll), a single mother of six, and Roop (James Earl Jones), twice divorced, with kids in Ohio, furiously explain to each other why they are not respectively a welfare queen and irresponsible absent father, but it's one of the film's many great moments. This is not a film that lazily wants to teach you that not all black people fit the negative stereotypes of them, but it's about how the politics shaped by these stereotypes directly affect every aspect of their personal lives. The first time we see a social worker visit Claudine to see if she is not breaking any rules that might cut her social benefits, the slow trek through the apartment is filmed in one long take, highlighting exactly how much Claudine is forced to make even her smallest private decision, up to room decoration, fit the expectations of a political burocracy designed to impose on, and humiliate, poor and black people.  

Claudine's feelings aren't safe from political incursion either. She and Roop are not necessarily made to be togethet, but they do greatly enjoy their company, and one of the film's joys is just seeing Jones and Carroll freely interact, flirt and reflect on how their love might affect their future. The camera stays close to their bodies and faces during long scenes in which they are allowed to interrogate their thoughts and feelings for as long as they can. It's as if the film wants to give them the time, the system doesn't have the patience for. Social security is dependent on one's relational status, and when a man gets into a house the social worker will want to know exactly why and who, blocking Claudine and Roop from dictating the pace of their relationship on their own terms. And even if they do make a decision about a common future they are left to navigate all the paradoxical complexities of their hellish burocracy. John Berry and his screenwriters Tina and Lester Pine deserve a lot of credit for untangling all the absurdities of the administrative rules and obligations hampering their heroes. Narratively, this makes the film and its characters' motivations and frustrations easier to follow, and politically it shows that the complex structure is a feature, not a bug. The social welfare system could look differently; making lives complicated for its beneficiaries is a political choice.   

But what to do? Well, the film doesn't have any real answers for that. There is a joke (it's funny because it's true!) that a lot of contemporary leftist art criticism boils down to "The character didn't turn to the screen and proclaim himself the exact type of communist/socialist I am." John Berry's issue here is similar, desperately trying to fir the film's ideals within a specific subset of radicalism that leads to muddled politics and (especially towards the end) ill-fitting character decisions and dialogue. On the one hand it actively tries to embody a perspective that's alienating to mianstream white audiences - Claudine only decides to go out with Roop when he stands up to a rich white homeowner, while her children complain that the Tarzan movies feature the wrong hero. They also hang out with a guy who changed his birth name to Abdullah, presented here as a thing doesn't require any further explanation. On the other hand, the film is actively skeptical of Charles' (Claudine's oldest son) efforts to join a civil rights group (named after W.E:B Du Bois) that seeks to protest injustices and doesn't fear confrontations with the police. The fates of Charles and Charline (Claudine''s oldest daughter; her final scene with her mom contains some awfully unnatural writing) both play above all as a screenwriter's desperate attempt to make a larger dramatic/political point. Sometimes reality will make that point for you. Diahann Carroll is here very beautiful and very good (even getting an Oscar nomination), but perhaps convincingly playing a sympathetitc black welfare recipient is no smart career move. After Claudne, she wasn't cast in a feature film until 1990.

287. The End of the Affair

Song - Sara (Fleetwood Mac)

Movie: The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan, 1999)

After playing the world's dimmest, sexualy confused, soldier in The Crying Game, Stephen Rea is now back in a Neil Jordan plot twister, playing a sexually absent husband too obtuse to realise that his wife Sarah (Julianne Moore) is meeting her needs with his friend Maurice (Ralph Fiennes). In a conversation about his suspicions of Sarah's whereabouts, Jordan frames him as a pathetic wimp who seems to almost shrink in stature when the centre of attention is on him. And when he returns home one day just when Maurice is putting the final touch on Sarah, she tells her lover not to worry about her moaning: her husband wouldn't recognise the sound. Playing such types seems to come naturally to Rea; even in roles that don't specifically call for it, there is a hint that the world's complexities will eventually overwhelm him. As a result, both Fergus in The Crying Game and Henry here, feel like real, specfic people ratther than metaphors for some pathology. I also found it quite amusing that Fergus is an IRA recruit, while Henry is a minister in the British government - feebleness has no ideology. The End of the Affair shows it has no demeanour either. 

Maurice, a succesful writer whose books have been adapted for the screen, enjoys overshadowing his friend with his worldly sophistication as much as he enjoys parading his high culture bonafides over the working class detective he hires to find out if Sarah is having an affair he doesn't know about. But his refinement and education mostly serve to intellectualise his inability to put two and two together until the answer is staring him right in the face. When your motto is "to be is to be perceived' it's hard to accept that love exists when it's not right there in the room with you, much less God. It's no great insight that this attitude is detrimental to the relationhsip with the love of your life, but the film's most provocative point, if you follow its reasoning to its logical conclusion, is that jealousy and atheism result from the same weakness. Sarah and God both have to go to great lengths to respectively show their love and their existence to Henry, who simply doesn't have the force of faith to accept as true that which he can't immediately see, feel or recognise. 

You can't go wrong giving Julianne Moore, Ralph Fiennes and Stephen Rea sharp, well-written dialogue veering into religious, romantic and ethical dilemma's. Jordan also handles the plot twist well; patiently building up to a tragic reveal by showing Sarah's point of view of an event he previously depicted from a different perspectve.  An additional nice touch is that we find out about Sarah's experience through the eyes of Maurice reading her diary. Unfortunately, this twist happens halfway through and ensures that there is really only one way for the movie to end, especially since Jordan had been ostentatiously highlighting Moore's cough long before that. This predictability would have been more palatable if the film had introduced a bit more doubt to either the question of God's existence or Maurice' fate. It's notable that he entire movie is filmed in the conventional style of a British World War 2 romantic drama, carefully ensuring it doesn't in any way deviate from this norm. The only exception is the incident that ultimately separates Maurice from Sarah, which creates a bit of a sense of the uncanny with its wobbly special effects. I don't know how intentional that was, but it did raise some hopes and expectations that the film would go in a more exietentally ambigous direction.

286. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Song - Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)

Movie: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)

Pat Garrett (James Coburn) 'learned to code' and what did that get him? Sure, when the old ways are dying, and your expertise as an outlaw has diminshing currency, it's tempting to reskill. And make no mistake, getting yourself elected as sheriff has its benefits - a steady income, no jail time, a decent horse. All of that's great, but do you really want to abandon your calling, your trade you've spent your whole life perfecting, to please some men in suits who look down on your craft? These people, they want to create laws, enclosed communities and capitalism and they think that killing men in the service of those ideals is the same as killing men in the service of freedom. They see no dignity in marksmanship, and have developed a written code that makes binary decisions about good and evil for us. We are given the illusion of choice, but the only decision we can really make is when to pull the trigger. Just a matter of time before machines replace us. Pat knows, look at him, he's riding and gunnin' around New Mexico as he always did, but his heart just isn't in it. You can be good at capturing criminals, but if you don't find any meaning or pleasure in it, what's the point?

Peckinpah directs as if he'll never again be allowed to make, or even see, a classic western, luxuriating in all the signposts we've come to associate with the genre, but above all in the freedom to roam and travel across the widespread landscapes. In one of the many lyrical moments, Pat Garrett is sitting by a river bank when a makeshift boat slowly passes by, its passengers shooting at objects they throw in the water. It's by our standards an entirely idiotic and dangerous activity that serves no purpose, but is saluted by Pat, who signs his approval by taking his own shot  It's of course on the mark, leading to Pat and his counterpart on the boat pointing guns at each other. The two men will likely never see each other again, going their own way in the wilderness, capturing exactly why the film repeatedly laments the rise of bordered settlements and towns where people have to act in ways that are compatible with the norms imposed by authorities. Pat Garrett has accepted that this transformation can't be stopped and has decided to adapt to it. As a result, he spends most of the film in misery, unlike Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) who has decided to be an outlaw until the bitter end. He knows this might mean an early death, but he'd rather be happy, and Kristofferson's roguish smile never disappears. 

The movie is ostensibly about Pat Garrett's pursuit of Billy the Kid, but neither Pat nor Billy is too obsessed with the outcome of said pursuit.The sherriff only does the job out of obligation, while for Billy the action is the juice. He knows that his adventures will come to an end sooner rather than later anyway, and part of him would rather be killed by his old friend than by someone else. Peckinpah is above all interested in exploring these contrasting attitudes to the changing world, and all the various colorful characters we meet along the way. This approach does mean that the film sometimes becomes a bit too leisurely, but every time it risks dragging. it steers into a funny, tense and/or eccentric moment. It helps too that it is filled with great character actors (that doesn't include Bob Dylan. His soundtrack is wonderfully melancholic, but as an actor he seems completely out of place, unable to adapt to the film's tone, style or period) who need only very little time to create highly specific and distinct personalities, which allows Peckinpah to build the film's most iconic moment around Slim Pickens' who is barely 5 minutes on screen before knockin' on heaven's door. That scene is also one of the few instances where the film swaps its standard western imagery for a dreamier, painterly look underscoring how futile it is to sacrifice such beauty for the pursuit of Billy.

285. The Color Purple

Song - Papa Was A Rollin' Stone (The Temptations)

Movie: The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)

I saw The Color Purple on the day Quincy Jones died, which makes you appreciate even more what a titanic figure he was. In addition to shaping the careers of Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra, and the trajectories of some of the most popular music genres, Lee Daniels may also owe him a thank you. This is one of the few major Hollywood classics I've seen that fits Daniels' counterintuitive sensibilities and I think it's not that much of a stretch to see Precious as a subversive version of The Color Purple. Both films feature horrific parental abuse, filtered through an aestehtic that is often antithetical to realistically communicating grave seriousness. It's just that Daniels' filter is campy explootation, whtle The Color Purple feels always on the brink of magic realism, or even full blown fantasy. Quincy Jones played a major role in that by convincing Steven Spielberg to come on as a director, despite concerns that he is not the right guy for a film about poor black folks in the American South. Jones's score however highlights his reasons for choosing Spielberg. Scenes of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) making breakfast or dressing Albert (Danny Glover) and his sons, are set to the kind of music that you'd more readily expect during the moment in a Christmas movie when a child is about to come down the stairs to see all the presents Santa brought. When you add Spielberg's characteristic childlike fairy-tale enchantment to that mix, Celie becomes something like a black Mary Poppins. 

Of course, Celie is not supposed to be a governess, but Albert's wife, sold by her dad at the age of 14. In of the film's more ruthless moments, just after Albert buys her, Spielberg cuts directly to him walking home with a leashed cow by his side. It's an apt metaphor and during these early scenes, the film is unflinching and straightforward in its depiction of the horrors inflicted upon Celie and her sister Nettie, and rather uncomfortably harrowing. As a result it's incredibly disorienting when we jump in time to a grown up Celie (the first time we see Whoopi Goldberg on screen) in the middle of a scene that borders on slapstick. When preparing for work, a clumsy awkward Albert keeps descending the stairs, only to remember that he has forgotten his watch, tie or collar. Every time he comes back upstairs, he finds Celie quietly waiting to give him the exact item he's been missing. It's funny, and very much directed with comedic intent, but it such a sudden and unexpected shift of tone you are unsure whether you are supposed to laugh. Soon enough, the arrival of Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), the fiancee of Albert's oldest son Harpo, and Shug Avery (Margaret Avery) the local blues star, and Albert's real true love, confrims that the film indeed has more on its mind than just solemnly depicting black misery.

Perhaps it has too much on its mind, and its willingness to go into all kinds of improbable directions as long as it gets an interesting emotional reaction suggests that the musical adaptation may be the better fit for this story. The only truly consistent throughline is Spielberg's obsession with dysfunctional families. He gets to depict so many terrible parent-child relationships, all of them bad in distinctly different and uniquely perverted ways. Celie is continously raped by her dad and is forced to sell the babies she births to hide his crimes. Through a twist of fate these babies end up being raised by Celie's sister and her husband in Africa. Adolph Caesar is so aggressively hostile and hierarchical towards Danny Glover it took me a couple of scenes to realise that he is his dad rather than some sort of old foe/(business) partner out for humiliation. Sofia with her maturity and confidence becomes a mother figure to Celie, despite being her daughter-in-law. The same is true of Shug Avery, only she is bisexual and sleeping with both Celie and Albert, until she leaves them and returns with a husband. Shug herself has a complicated relationship with her dad, a priest who hates that she has abandoned church for a life of sin with blues musicians. This culminates in the film's absolute greatest scene, a musical duel between the church's choir and Shug's band that leads to a reconciliation of the two lifestyles.

284. Da 5 Bloods

Song - What's Going On (Marvin Gaye)

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 Americans 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, the film 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 criticisms 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 all result from the same vile ideologies 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 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 quoting a rather wonderful poem by Langston Hughes: "I say it plain, America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath, America will be." The poem 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 America's riches. 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 plays in the same register as Willem Dafoe's famous death scene in Platoon. That moment, bloated in heavyheanded grandiosity and symbolism was when I fully gave up on Stone's 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 their team's successes 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 (a new, more progressive version of) 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.