Nominations:
Best Picture
Best Director (Spike Lee)
Best Supporting Actor (Adam Driver)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Original Score
Best Film Editing
It’s hard to believe that only now, after three solid decades of solid, critically acclaimed filmmaking, Spike Lee is getting his first nominations in the Best Picture and Best Director categories. But if there was a movie of his that would break this long, sad tradition, I’m happy for it to be BlacKkKlansman.
The world “timely” is a little overused in the current political climate, but in this case it is absolutely fitting. Providing a powerfully moving account of racial tensions in 70’s America while taking some creative liberties with the original story, Spike Lee offers a comedic look into the real life account of how an African-American police officer and his Jewish coworker infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, rose up the ranks, and exposed their crimes to the public.
Its parallels to the modern-day are obvious, often bordering on heavy-handed. David Duke’s proclaimed desire to “Make America great again” seems like little more than a snarky jab at a particular loud-mouthed politician, and is just one of several times Spike Lee takes away the audience’s opportunity to make the connections themselves.
Eventually it gets to the point that it feels like Spike Lee is assuming the audience is too dumb to understand the statement he’s making about the unchanging, inerasable presence of racism in society. But then, right at the end, he drops all pretenses and metaphors, choosing to display a montage of contemporary white supremacy rallies, racial hate crimes, and politicians refusing to place the blame on the groups responsible. Spike Lee’s retaliation to the recent trend of blatantly public racism is to similarly lay all his cards out on the table, boldly going against our expectations to create a film that dispenses with subtleties for an equally direct attack on modern politics.
In its lack of restraint and brazenly confident handling of the topic at hand, BlacKkKlansman manages to walk the razor thin line between mainstream and critical appeal. Given the Academy’s current populist inclinations, this means that this movie actually has a pretty decent chance of winning the top prize. If the Academy wants to demonstrate their appreciation of public opinion without too much compromise, then this would be the film to vote for.
But until the ceremony itself, we don’t really know where majority of Academy voters sit on this sliding scale of populist vs niche cinema. There is still a fairly good chance they will end up giving Best Picture to the critical darling Roma, or the off-kilter comedy The Favourite. Just keep in mind when placing your bets that if there is a dark horse in this year’s Oscar race, it could quite possibly be BlacKkKlansman.
