Do The Right Thing

365 Films

Entry #145

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Directed by Spike Lee

I know the last thing anybody wants to hear is my monumentally ill-informed take on some recent current events.  What I decided to do instead was vent some of my frustrations in the most productive and active way I know how: I watched Do The Right Thing.  Truth be told, I went through a period in high school where I was OBSESSED with this movie.  I even attempted a half assed independent study wherein I would examine the relationship between controversy and popular cinema by examining Do The Right Thing and another movie, I think an Oliver Stone title, needless to say the project never materialized.  On the plus side, I watched the film so many times as to the point of near memorization (certain scenes anyway) and I read countless essays, reviews, and reactions to the film discussing its incredibly layered visual and ideological content.  Perhaps I should re-wind a bit and relay some facts about the VERY first time I sat down to watch Do The Right Thing.  Having been a Spike Lee fan from a very early age, it is surprising that took me almost until the end of high school to finally watch DTRT.  I remember grave warnings from my parents as to the more morbid aspects of the film and the sickening feeling one gets from watching the various conflicts laced throughout go from bad to shockingly awful in a matter of minutes.  I probably should have prefaced this with a warning by saying if you have not seen Do The Right Thing, you should perhaps cease reading right now, drop whatever you were doing, and go watch it immediately.  I remember being quite taken with the earlier portion of the film where Mr. Lee examines a fairly average day in the life of a Bed-Stuy block and the pizzeria around which all activity seems to buzz.  The colors are dazzling, particularly the way Mr. Lee and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson portray heat on film.  The photography in this film deserves a very special place in the cinematic hall of fame for so beautifully capturing the essence of what it feels like to take five steps on a New York City sidewalk in the middle of summer and find yourself drenched in your own perspiration.  The characters are lively and engaging and Mr. Lee seems to have adhered to the Matt Groening design for cartoons in that almost every character in this film is distinguishable in silhouette.  This is not a theory I have tested under any circumstance but I believe it speaks more to the care and careful attention Mr. Lee allotted every single speaking part in this film.  Each character has such exact mannerisms, speaking patterns, and wardrobe that it’s almost as if even though we are being introduced to them in a very short amount of time, we feel as though we are just another resident of this particular block.  It’s actually a very tricky thing to pull off and Lee does it with an expert amount of subtle character work.  All of this is going through my head and then night begins to fall in the film and that sneaking suspicion that has been rearing it’s ugly head throughout that something terrible is about to happen becomes a feeling of dread nestled firmly in the pit of your stomach.  Then an argument happens, there is an escalation, an escalation upon that escalation, and even further escalation and then…all hell breaks loose.  If one wants a cinematic master class on how to direct an angry mob and a subsequent riot, all one needs to do is watch the final half hour of Do The Right Thing.  On a personal note, I happen to think abrupt, visceral crowd scenes are a particular specialty of Mr. Lee’s.  See also Malcolm X, Red Hook Summer, and Summer of Sam (damn, Spike Lee makes a lot of good movies about summer time, doesn’t he?) I can vividly remember how troubled I was by the ending of Do The Right Thing but I was troubled for exactly the wrong (in my later revised opinion) reasons.  I was more hurt by the fact that four walls and a roof were knocked down than the life that was taken just a scene prior.  I was more outraged for Sal and his sons over the destruction of their community than the actual neighborhood having to watch another Black teenager be needlessly killed.  It’s shameful to admit it now, looking back on it, but I remember the helpless feeling I had watching that lifeless slab of real estate burn to the ground.  This is where it helps to re-watch films and gather as many outside opinions on them as you possibly can because in the intervening years I was able to do a complete 180 in regards to my sympathies and it was then that I realized this was a film that would take several viewings to even begin to wade through the myriad of complicated ideas Mr. Lee is attempting to channel.  I’ll try to wrap this up by briefly summarizing why I believe Do The Right thing has lasted nearly twenty-five years and will continue to endure as long as civilization is still standing.  First things first, this is a very angry film, and there’s really no getting around that.  Mr. Lee was clearly enraged by a slew of recent, racially motivated murders in the New York area so that would lead one to believe that Do The Right Thing is at its core, essentially the story of an unarmed Black kid killed by the NYPD.  Don’t get me wrong, when I say angry, I don’t mean to imply that it’s an all consuming sense of anger because there are also deep wells of sadness embedded through every single interaction in this film.  Take the opening credits sequence for example, there is the lone dancer played by Rosie Perez and she appears to be on an anonymous street lined with brown stones.  The lighting is fairly exaggerated in a classical sense, almost what you would say in a soundstage for a Hollywood musical.  This could be the set of Singin’ in the Rain but the type of dancing in which Perez is engaged and her continually altered wardrobe suggests a more modern and much more aggressive form of human movement (Lee even puts her in literal boxing gloves at one point).  What this suggests to me is a motif that runs throughout the entire film, that of style, culture, and generations nestled uncomfortably on top of one another.  Every single interaction in the film primarily consists of individuals from a particular group or identity asserting their own collective power on this crowded block in Brooklyn.  The sadness, I would argue, comes from the fact that sometimes these types of interactions lead to some wonderfully human moments of compassion and understanding.  That is what it ultimately makes it all the more heart wrenching when moments of anger, cowardice, and racism lead to the lifeless body of a young black teenager.  To Mr. Lee this is not simply a pained cry for justice, but rather, as summed up by the two opposing quotes from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X at the end, a sorrowful examination of how we will most likely never truly understand and trust one another.