When Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea are demonstrating in solidarity with the violent police enforcement of black Americans, there is no doubt that this most powerful black racial equality movement in the United States since the 1960s has become the most important event of the times outside the new crown epidemic.
What is the place of black people in American society? Why are they still being treated unfairly to this day? Black director Spike Lee's "Do What You Should" gives us new inspiration in today's context.
At the end of the film, a chaotic violent fight attracts white cops. Unfortunately, the white cops only clamped the black guy's limbs with batons, not letting him move, giving him no chance to breathe. Eventually, under the tough and violent enforcement of three white police officers, the black guy died of suffocation, like Freud of Minnesota.
The images are strikingly similar to reality, but "Do What You Should" is not simply a crusade against white cops, but exposes the complex ecology of the black community and their own inferiority at the same time, which requires enough courage for a black director. Some people even evaluate this film as a black racial version of "The Devil is Coming", which is indeed true, in this movie, we see both the torture and alienation of poverty on blacks, and the attack between different races caused by this alienation.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > a restless image of a restless black community</h1>
In the opening scenes, Spike Lee playfully has a woman in constant disguise, sometimes dancing in tension, sometimes wearing boxing gear and waving her fists. Restlessness is the most obvious feature of the film in terms of imagery. This restlessness is reflected in both color and acting on the lens, and it is more transpiring in the atmosphere.
The restlessness of color lies in the fact that the whole film is shrouded in a layer of incandescent red and yellow, allowing the scene to constantly collide in the palette.
The studio of the block radio DJ appears with a dark red burning touch.
The "mayor's" bedroom emerges with a dull sense of depression.
The street behind the stuttering man is the visual sense of ochre red choking eyes.
Behind the three uncles who had been fooling all day, they appeared directly in front of us with a whole bright red wall.
Intense, boiling, and ostentatious, the accumulation of these warm color pictures forms a restless color combination, which both points to the heat of the weather level and hints at the deep uneasiness of the human heart. Therefore, Spike Lee has been looking for cool vents for the characters in the film, which is also the hidden line that the film has been holding.
At 26:00, several black men opened the fire hydrants and splashed into the street. This was sparkle Lee's first venting arrangement, and it was on a physiological level. Because at this time, the contradictions and conflicts of all the people on the block are still in a slight stage, and people only put the restlessness in the subconscious, along with the physical heat, into the cool water.
By 47:00, the contradictions between Italians and blacks, hispanics and blacks, Koreans and blacks, and even between blacks began to intensify. Their psychological restlessness cannot be cooled by the physical coolness. Spark Lee "broke the fourth wall" at this point, allowing blacks, Italians, Spaniards and Koreans, each facing the camera, to reveal the strongest anger in their hearts. Tearing the veil of the image, allowing the fictional characters to break the balance point, the grumpy mood can be effectively expressed by the violent image.
This agitation is again suppressed by Spark Lee until the midnight riot at the end of the film.
Three emotional outpourings, accompanied by an ever-present compositional tilt.
When the recording boy Raheem first appeared, the picture swept down his face at a 45-degree angle.
The protagonist Mook's mother, who also often sits in the window, is skewed by the camera.
During the climactic stage, when the spectacled man Begi appeared at the Purcell shop with the stuttering man and Raheem, he was also presented by the camera at an angle of tilting upwards.
When these people of different ethnicities and different groups are independent and look at each other from an extreme and narrow perspective, peace of mind is impossible for them. So Spike Lee let these characters of different skin colors appear menacingly in the oblique picture.
However, a fixed tilted shot only shows the narrowness of the characters' mentality, and does not extend the narrow changes in their impatience and the degree of urgency of this change. Therefore, the sharp push movement on the mirror makes the color, weather, and picture lively, forming a closed circuit, allowing us to see what kind of visual effect these people who are grinning in the heart and eager to swallow each other alive and peel each other alive will appear in front of us.
In the "Breaking the Fourth Wall" section, when everyone pours out their anger in front of the camera, the camera pushes past.
When Berghi incited Raheem to join him against Cell's shop, the camera rushed toward the tape recorder.
These rush shots make the anger in the film traceable. The anger expressed in simple profanity is just the pale rhetoric of the incompetent director, and the use of camera language to make these characters or symbols be instantly oppressed by the rapid push of the camera, which is Spike Lee's fierceness and artistic intuition.
He wants us to empathize with these restless characters like a roller coaster, to find the unexplained sources of restlessness that the black community itself cannot explain.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > two voice stances, inter-ethnic attacks</h1>
If anyone can't stand this black movie, I think it's understandable, after all, not everyone can tolerate the noisy neighborhood environment, and the interweaving of Latin dance music, piano music, blues, black rap, hip-pop and other music.
Spike Lee doesn't care about the audience's comfort. Just as if you want to watch a smooth and entertaining secret agent film, you can choose the Mission Impossible series instead of the second and third parts of Spy Movies. Because Spike Lee, like Paul Greengrass, is a director who focuses on the live experience, greengrass uses handheld photography and jump-cut editing, while Spike Lee uses brooklyn neighborhood realistic sound processing.
Unlike image space, the sound itself is aggressive. Space is a definite existence, and once aggression occurs, it must be artificially forcibly occupied. But sound is different, it does not require human material intervention, once a person twists the switch to adjust the size of the sound, it can invisibly invade the crowd in another space.
Noise is not just public morality, in the movie "Do What You Should", it means a hidden aggression between different races.
In the first shot of the film, a radio DJ played by Samuel Jackson "preaches" to the crowd on his own channel, even though these "sermons" just casually call everyone to get up, or let everyone exercise restraint and stop venting their anger.
If you look at it from the plot point of view, this DJ character does not substantively intervene in the main story, he is actually the only character in the film who does not go out of the room and come to the street. But he has the broadest vocal power. And the right to let your voice be heard by others, and you must listen to it, is one of the most central topics of "Do What You Should Do".
This can be seen in several very obvious dialogue conflicts in the film. For example, small Hispanic gangs had to compete with Raheem, the former wanting to play dance music loud on a tape recorder, while the latter wanted to play black music.
After a failed argument with the Hispanic gang, Raheem went to Cell's pizzeria to find a presence and was reprimanded by Cell for playing his loud black rap in the store.
After Becky inadvertently soiled his shoes by a white man, he also grabbed the white man, had to apologize, and kept stressing that it was a black gathering area, telling him to get out of the egg. It was clear that Becky knew he had no right to let the white man go, but he, surrounded by a crowd of black brothers, could shout scolding and reprimanding the white man.
Making others necessary to listen to their own music, or to obey their own orders and opinions, was the most immediate and unavoidable desire for power in the Black Quarter.
Everyone is self-righteous, and everyone does not miss the opportunity to preach and control, because everyone is afraid of losing their attributes and voice.
Pino is violent to Vito, making him listen to himself instead of being in the company of black people.
Mook warns his sister to stay away from Purcell for fear that she will be sexually harassed by her boss.
A mother whose son was saved by the "mayor" sneered at the "mayor's" advice, insisting that her motherly way did not need others to interfere.
Becky points fingers at Xaar and tells him to have black photos in the store because Xaar runs a restaurant in the black district.
It seems that the crowd is noisy, but in fact, the will is unified. The voice became the brilliant pen of Spike Lee, who revealed the original and noisy nature of the Negro without giving it a negative; he hid the black man's desire for power in its entirety without revealing it; he covered the helpless fear of the Negro without self-pity; he even more exposed the ignorance of the Negro blindly, without burying it selfishly.
As a result, sound becomes not only a coping point for audiences who have no intention of listening to black lamentations, but also a joint point for fans who have the heart to rub the weaknesses of black people.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > three group portraits of everyday, sudden riots? </h1>
The DJ turns into the microphone and says "Wake up! Wake up! As the camera rises from the studio, looking down on the streets of this black congregation, we follow the camera to see group portraits of Mook, the "Mayor," the Stuttering Man, and the Purcell family.
This is not a film with a prominent main story, and it can even be said that "Do What You Should" does not have a main line, it is just a film that uses the lens to record the daily life of residents in Brooklyn, New York. Scattered perspective makes us feel like we are aimlessly shoulder to shoulder with these black people, feeling the heat and uneasiness of this land.
But after watching the movie, we can clearly understand the hidden main line of "Do What We Should Do". That is, the contradictions surrounding the Pizzeria Xaar.
First, Becky saw that the walls of the store were full of white photos, and he was dissatisfied, so he had to ask Sel to hang black photos as well, so the two had a conflict.
Later, Raheem played loud black music in Cell's store, much to Cell's chagrin.
Then, while selling black photographs to Cell, the stuttering man argues with Pino, The Stutterer's eldest son, Pino, who treats the stuttering man rudely.
After these three events occurred in succession, they finally formed an "alliance" and came to Xaar's store at midnight to denounce it.
However, this hidden clue does not forcefully promote the development of the main story with clear focus and concentrated characters like a general drama film.
For example, some time ago, the French film "Les Misérables", which also tells about police violence against blacks, has been narrating the series of processes of how three Paris policemen deal with black disputes, how to violently injure black children, and how to destroy evidence.
This is not the case with "Do What You Should", and before and after the conflict between Becky and Sail, the film is not laying the groundwork for the origin of this conflict, nor does it describe the aftermath. It is letting the protagonists Mook, Sail, Beji, Raheem and the Stutter man deal with their daily chores, which are also full of tension and latent violent confrontation.
Like Becky and the white boy who soiled his shoes. A group of black teenagers used fire hydrants to cool off, causing a white man's car to get wet, causing the police to intervene. Or the verbal clash between Raheem and the Korean-American shop owner, the altercation between the "mayor" and a bunch of black teenagers.
These sparks, the "fires of war" that can be lit in minutes, are not weaker than the several disputes at Pizzeria. Spike Lee slyly distracts the viewer's attention from the main story and constantly shifts to other potential violence that can occur at any time.
So, at the climax of the film, after Raheem and Purcell start the "war", we will be both surprised and taken for granted: the neighborhood "needs too much" a war to ignite the restlessness in everyone's hearts, except that the war is happening when and where.
Interestingly, when we look closely at the tragedy of Raheem and Purcell, we feel that this violent conflict may be the most unlikely of all potential violent confrontations.
Furious, Becky tried to rally his fellow black men on the street, he found that no one wanted to join him in protest at Xaar's shop. Because in the minds of these people, Beji's behavior is pure nonsense, Sel is a good Italian businessman, as a long-time diner of this shop for more than ten years, they have not been blinded by Beji's inflammatory remarks.
And on The Purcell's side, the same is true. When Pino advised him to sell the shop and move to an Italian-American area, Purcell continued to appease his son's black hatred. In the eyes of the Italian businessman who has dedicated to the black neighborhood for more than a decade, he does not have the slightest resentment toward the black community, but warmth and pride, because his pizza has an irreplaceable place in the lives of these black regulars.
But when the violence broke out, people's eyeballs were filled with the blood of hatred, and they only had collective revenge in their hearts.
When Raheem was suffocated by the police with a baton, they spilled their hatred not only on the white cops, but also on the pizzeria that had served them for more than a decade. Smashing and burning, overnight, let this old shop disappear.
Ironically, when the blacks destroyed Purcell's pizzeria, they focused their riotous eyes on the Department Store of Korean Descent, and if it were not for the Korean's clever admission that he was also black, he would have ended up in a terrible defeat.
Spike Lee concludes the film by quoting two leaders of the black movement in the sixties, Martin Luther King Jr., who insisted on "nonviolence," and Malcolm Lee, a racist who preached "countering violence with violence." X。
And the "should be" in the title of the film "Do What Should Be" has also become the proverb of these black people in the film who warn each other every day. What exactly is "what should be"? Was it Martin's "nonviolent" civil rights movement, or Malcolm's "violence against violence" race riot?
Spike Lee has no intention of answering this, because we all know that "non-violence" is the basis for the peaceful acquisition of civil rights. And what he really wants to explore is the dazedness of the vast black community in the United States, choosing Martin, or Malcolm? It's not something that can be said for all. He just wanted to illustrate a phenomenon that also emerged in the black civil rights movement that began to spread around the world on May 25, 2020:
Black people want to achieve "non-violence", but the accumulation of hatred makes them have to "fight violence with violence".
This article was first published in the headline number [movie non-stop]