Lee’s “Chi-Raq” Looks to Increase the Peace

Cinema | December 18th, 2015

Following the honorary Oscar he received last month at the Governors Awards (along with the blistering truth-to-power acceptance speech he made), Spike Lee doesn’t seem likely to pick up many competitive Academy Award nominations for “Chi-Raq,” even though he should.

Co-written with Kevin Willmott, whose diabolically good “C.S.A.: Confederate States of America” is an inspiration to every college professor who dreams of making it in the movies, “Chi-Raq” bears all the hallmarks of Lee’s signature, inimitable style. And to everyone praising “Chi-Raq” as the filmmaker’s best work since “Do the Right Thing,” let’s not discount all the brilliant movies Lee has made between 1989 and today.

The audaciousness of “Chi-Raq” begins with a symbolically potent retelling of Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” (by way of Leymah Gbowee) that uses the culture of contemporary American gun violence – and especially its toll on innocent victims and children – as the impetus for women to withhold sex from their partners until a commitment to peace is made. That adventurous spirit continues with the choice to deliver much of the movie’s spoken dialogue in rhyming couplets and poetic meter. The incorporation of and reliance upon music is reminiscent of “School Daze,” but “Chi-Raq” is packed with overt and covert references to all kinds of movies as well as several entries from Lee’s own filmography.

Many of Lee’s veteran ensemble members show up in roles of various shapes and sizes. Samuel L. Jackson glues it all together as dapper narrator Dolmedes, even reprising Mister Senor Love Daddy’s “Wake up!” admonition. Wesley Snipes gets loose as gang leader Cyclops, and Angela Bassett commands attention and wields power as historian and advocate Miss Helen. Harry Lennix, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Roger Guenveur Smith and other reliable faces are joined by Nick Cannon, Jennifer Hudson and John Cusack, whose dedicated clergyman is loosely based on Michael Pfleger of Chicago’s St. Sabina Church.

The performance of the film, however, is owned by Teyonah Parris as Lysistrata, a young woman with “a mind like Einstein and a truly luscious behind.” Parris was strong in “Dear White People” but she is genuinely great in “Chi-Raq.” No matter how outrageous the scene – in one jaw-dropper she seduces wicked David Patrick Kelly’s General King Kong, a seriously messed-up sex fiend in Confederate flag underpants – Parris delivers from a place of total commitment. In essence, Lysistrata has to match every move made by Cannon’s tough title character, except – to paraphrase a famous line – backwards and in hot pants and a tank top.

Like so many of Lee’s finest, “Chi-Raq” can turn on a dime, swerving from scenes of painful, gut-punching grief to sequences filled with wild and ridiculous gags. Lee also drops plenty of knowledge by having characters share sobering statistics in conversation and deliver speeches directly into the camera.

Even though there is nothing shy, retiring or inconsequential about the focus of “Chi-Raq” on gang-instigated death, experiencing the film causes one to imagine what movies Lee might cook up if he doubled down on firearm-related injustices and targeted the steady supply of stories in which white police officers kill unarmed black citizens.

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