Do the Right Thing

Written and directed by Spike Lee. Starring Danny Aiello (Salvatore ‘Sal’ Fragione), Ossie Davis (Da Mayor), Spike Lee (Mookie).

Bottom line: With Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee is able to start a conversation about race in America, pointedly and brilliantly.

4/4

In Do the Right Thing, we watch an urban New York neighborhood during a heat-wave. Racial tensions smolder before erupting into violence. It is one of those movies that’s difficult to summarize; there are numerous characters whose plot lines intertwine but the core of the movie looks at the larger issue of racism. We have the Italian American, Sal (Aiello), who has owned the neighborhood pizza shop for twenty-five years. On one wall, he has a “Wall of Fame” which features photos of Italian-Americans. He refuses to put up any African or African-American photos. His son is a racist. We have the patron, a militant black power character, who vows to boycott Sal’s until there are Africans represented on the wall. Meanwhile, we have the brutal, white police officers. We have the Chinese owners of a local grocery store. We have the Hispanic community. We have Radio Raheem (Nunn) who blares Public Enemy on his boombox.

Spike Lee is able to present the complexity of this issue, and this film-world, with coherence and harmony. This is what makes Do the Right Thing so good. The important part about this movie is that there is no one completely at fault. It may not sound like much, I mean, we have antiheroes all the time, right? Here though, the purpose is to spark a dialog about race in America. The movie closes with two quotes. The first is a warning from Martin Luther King Jr. about the dangers of violence. I thought, “Alright, I get it. All of the destruction in the movie could’ve been avoided by choosing peace.” Then comes a statement by Malcom X saying that while he doesn’t condone violence, violence might be necessary in self-defense and he does condone self-defense. Even in conclusion this movie presents more than one perspective.  

In Do the Right Thing, the message is as ambiguous as the film’s title. What is the “right thing?” Of course, we all want to do that but how do we know what it is? Even if we do know the right thing, it’s a lot easier said than done.

Aside from a story perspective, Spike Lee fully uses the medium of film. It is a very hot summer day so he shows three old men sitting in lawn chairs partially covered by an umbrella. They sit in front of a fire-engine red brick wall. The color in and of itself makes the audience feel the warmth of that summer day. It reminded me of a Rothko painting.

In other situations, Lee uses a wide-angle lens pushed close up to the actors who speak directly into the camera. It is an uncomfortable angle to watch and listen to someone scream at you. That’s the point. Our proximity to the characters removes any chance we have of escaping the situation. It’s as if the film is telling us that we have to address these issues.

I just finished listening to an audio version of Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. It is about tackling the resistance that is preventing you from doing what you truly dream. At one point, he explains that in writing this book, his own demons of resistance fought him. He said to himself, “I am a fiction writer. Shouldn’t I, instead of writing a nonfiction book like this, cloak the same message in metaphor? I could write a story about a soldier’s trials and tribulations as he undertakes a mission.” Do the Right Thing is like The War of Art in the sense that it is not a message hidden in a film, it a direct message in and of itself. Spike Lee uses jump cuts help develop this idea.

A jump cut is where the camera moves slightly between two shots. It moves in such a way that you can tell there was a cut. I have a bunch of jump cuts in my review videos, if you want to see an example.  Up until around the 1960’s, cut jumps were considered more a mistake than anything. They are jarring and make you aware of the camera so it breaks some level of immersion. So, by using a couple jump cuts, Lee is able to address the audience and the audience’s interaction with the film. That is, we aren’t going to get too caught up in the plot that we lose sight of the fact that this is a movie with a message. Do the Right Thing is a cinematic representation of a speech or an editorial; it not only tells you but it shows you.

I’ve mentioned this before, I’m sure, but I’ll say it again. A good movie might tell you, a bad movie will probably tell you again, but a great movie will show you. Do the Right Thing is a great movie that I highly recommend. I’m only sorry it’s taken me so long to see it.