BlacKkKlansman

— I often think Spike Lee’s films are good, but I just don’t like them. This is one of the good films that I also like! It’s the story of a Colorado Springs’, black police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1970s. An offhand telephone call led to the black officer and his white, Jewish partner adopting a single undercover persona—one handled phone conversations with everyone from local Klansman to David Duke and the other gave a white face to the duo for physical meetings. With a plot like that, it would have been tempting to push things to absurdity. Instead, there’s something almost easygoing and believable in the telling as we’re transported back 40 years to a time when opposing white and black power forces were ready to erupt into violence, to a time before the divide narrowed and the bigotry lessened. But with good editing, powerful images, and eerily familiar words, the attitudes of the past begin to look a lot like the present. We’re left with a terrible realization that, instead of dissipating, the intolerance and racism have become normalized, to the point that mainstream politics now carries the message. The relaxed feeling floating through the story reminds us how easily we have been lulled into acceptance of an undercurrent of hatred. It isn’t lost that the black and white undercover officers may have become a single person, but everywhere else things are still very separate. It’s a frightening indictment and an excellent film.

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[2018. 135 min. Directed by Spike Lee. Starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, and Laura Harrier
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blackkklansman-2018