It’s a sweltering summer day in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, as racial tensions bake in the sun until they burst. Anyone who knows American movies has been down this block before: The frayed brownstones, the sputtering fire hydrant, Sal’s Pizzeria and its controversial wall of Italian Americans. Da Mayor walks these blocks spouting the wisdom of a mad man, and so does Radio Raheem, with knuckles that speak to the eternal battle of love and hate. Watch the movie now and of course it feels timelier than ever — just as it did in the midst of the George Floyd protests — but before all that, watch the movie now and marvel at the sheer precision of a filmmaker capable of rooting his audience at the center of the action from start to finish.
Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” radiates with tremendous power, in part because it grounds a searing perspective on Black life and racist persecution within an immersive world. No matter the infuriating tragedy at its core, Lee turns his milieu into a lively, inviting place, centering its underlying ideas around an empathetic core — and damn good filmmaking to boot. “Do the Right Thing” is funny, romantic, and bittersweet well before that harrowing conclusion, which hits hard in part because of everyting lead up it. It’s intoxicating cinema rich with ideas and emotion that spill from the screen: Consider it a screed, a warning, and a lament, but first and foremost, it’s a timeless work of art.
The movie has become so synonymous with the energy, frustrations, and communal uprisings of modern Black struggle in America that it’s hard to imagine a world in which it doesn’t exist. Lee’s virtuoso filmmaking juggles a vast ensemble with the colorful vitality of an MGM musical and a righteous indignation on par with the great orators refenced in its credits. And it makes these arguments approachable to anyone, whether or not they bring a personal grasp of the stakes to the story from the start. The dueling quotes that close the movie, as police violence gives rise to a riot and nobody knows where to turn for consolation, pit Martin Luther King Jr.’s pacifism against Malcolm X’s argument for self-defense. Yet the true of voice of reason comes from Radio 108FM, the last on your dial but first in your hearts, and that’s the truth, Ruth: “There’s no end in sight for this heat wave so today the cash money word is chill.”
As pizza deliveryman Mookie, Lee portrays the face of innocence melting into fury found throughout much of the provocative and rewarding work that followed, from “Bamboozled” to “BlackKklansman.” Subjugation sits at the center of Lee’s oeuvre as subject and object, but it all started here, on a sweltering day that goes very wrong. America is still sorting out its lessons, but the discourse on race relations wouldn’t have gotten even this far without “Do the Right Thing” to kick it off. Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” sets the stage for the movie’s passionate tone, but its poetic sense of purpose comes from the first full-fledged example of Lee’s extraordinary aesthetic. Filmmaking — and, indeed, society itself — is better because of it.