Film
Mo’Better Blues
- Director
- Spike Lee
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 129 mins
Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington) is a man with the horn. There’s the horn he blows for a living and the horn he has for the two women in his life. (Lest you think this introduction is a little crude, watch out for the creative ways in which director Spike Lee makes the most of the phallic potential of Mr. Washington’s trumpet.) Shy, restrained schoolteacher Indigo Downes (Joie Lee) dreams of a future in which he hangs around a little more often, while aspiring chanteuse Clarke Betancourt (Cynda Williams) wants to be in his bed and his band. But jazz is Bleek’s only real love, to which he devotes himself day and night, dominating his fellow musicians and propelling himself onwards despite the thoroughgoing incompetence of manager and childhood pal Giant (Spike Lee).
Much has been made of Lee’s detoxified depiction of the jazz scene, which stands in stark contrast to the junkie stereotypes populating Bird and Round Midnight. Take away the copious expletives and this could almost be a Disney production celebrating the virtues of hard work and dedication. That’s fine if Lee’s intention is to present black musicians in a positive light by glossing over inconveniently unsavoury aspects of their behaviour. The trouble is that his stated justification for stereotypical depictions of everyone who isn’t a young black male – specifically the money-grabbing Jewish club owners – is that of factual accuracy. Spike doesn’t just want to have his cake and eat it; he wants us to swallow it too.
These divisions were more creatively blurred in his brilliant, iconoclastic Do the Right Thing, which invited uncomfortable audiences to take sides for very different reasons. Mo’Better Blues lacks that film’s dramatic focus and swiftly degenerates into an overlong, sprawling mess that meanders towards a quite ghastly, contrived conclusion more suited to lazy mainstream Tinseltown directors than a filmmaker of Lee’s abilities. Denzel Washington contributes a performance of supreme assurance, but this is hardly merited by a production that succeeds neither and entertainment nor polemic.
is needed now More than ever
It’s back on screen to in the Watershed’s Summer of Spike August Sunday brunch season of Spike Lee flicks to complement the release of BlacKkKlansman.
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