I’m a little embarrassed to admit that this is my first Spike Lee movie I’ve. I’d been vaguely aware of it, but it was back-to-back Daily Show interviews with Spike Lee and Nick Cannon that made me go, “Whoa, I need to see this!” Naturally, it never came to my local theater, and the city an hour+ drive from my house only had it before about two weeks, so I missed it on the big screen. Netflix just got it on DVD, though, and I snatched it up the first chance I got.
A modern retelling of an Aristophanes play, Chi-Raqtakes place in Chicago, where gang-related shootings have ended more American lives than both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The fighting here is focused on two Southside gangs, the Spartans and the Trojans. Desperate to put a stop to the violence, Lysistrata, the girlfriend of the Spartan leader Chi-Raq, decides to go on a “sex strike” from her man until he agrees to lay down arms, and she enlists women from both the Spartan and Trojan sides, as well as women all over Chicago and beyond, to join the cause.
This being my first Spike Lee movie, I don’t know how it compares to his other work, so we’ll stick to the story at hand. I thought this film was a pretty singular experience. It looks amazing, with its very purposeful color scheme, dramatically-framed shots, and semi-musical flair with some movements choreographed or synced to the beat of the soundtrack. Most of the characters somehow seem archetypal while feeling really specific. They carry the story with stylish but earnest vibrancy. The satire is fun, while the commentary sometimes meanders between insightful and overly pointed; at times, it feels a bit too “tell, not show.” I can see how the film might be labeled “preachy,” but at the same time, there’s a real rawness to it. This is a sleek, precisely-penned movie, and yet it’s also an urgent voice shouting and sick of not being heard.
A lot of flavor is drawn from the source material. There are the cheeky reference, like the eye-patch-wearing Trojan leader Cyclops and the jokes about a young Chicagoan named Oedipus, and we have a one-man Greek chorus in the form of dapper Dolmedes. More notably, however, much of the dialogue is written in verse. First of all, this is really striking and makes the film stand out from most standard fare. Overall, I think the device has its pros and cons. It allows for some really dazzling lines with stunningly-phrased truth bombs and extremely clever rhyming. That said, a huge chunk of the delivery falls into something of a sing-song cadence that keeps the dialogue from really feeling spoken. There are times when the rhythm flows more tightly, usually by someone emphasizing the beat just a bit more or a bit less than the general tempo, and then it’s like magic. Throughout too much of the film, though, it’s at a not-quite-right place somewhere in between, which makes it come across as a little too consciously written.
As Lysistrata and Chi-Raq, both Teyonah Parris and Nick Cannon are great. I especially love Lysistrata, a potent cross between brilliant, fierce, passionate, and smooth. Further props go to Angela Bassett as a neighborhood woman and Samuel L. Jackson as Dolmedes. Also featured are John Cusack, Jennifer Hudson, Harry Lennix (Boyd from Dollhouse,) and Dave Chappelle.
Warnings
No comments:
Post a Comment