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Jul 09, 2019gord_ma rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Update: Spike Lee will personally be at the TIFF Lightbox on July 19 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of [Do the Right Thing] and its 4K digital restoration (https://tiff.net/events/do-the-right-thing-with-spike-lee).   Like the great American novels, [Do the Right Thing], undoubtedly Spike Lee’s masterpiece, is a great American film. An exemplar of the art of filmmaking, it is a virtual slice in time and in place of its America. The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik stated in an interview on PBS on the passing of J.D. Salinger that nobody captured New York in the late-1940s better than Salinger. Well, nobody better than Spike Lee captured Bedford–Stuyvesant in Brooklyn during the hottest day of the late-1980s. Just watch it. If we must create interactive holographic programs in the future of Brooklyn in the late-1980s, [Do the Right Thing] would definitely be a great resource.    [Do the Right Thing] is essentially a coming-of-age story set in a country still grappling with the responsibilities of its adulthood and the uncertainties of its future. Like 19th century Bildungsroman, written by German-speaking authors in a pre-Unification Germany in search of a unified homeland and spiritual happiness, [Do the Right Thing] is about young individuals who grapple with similar existential questions. Mookie (Spike Lee), the protagonist, is challenged by inner turmoil, repression in one’s community, questions of identity (a man or a father), his meaning in life, and the march of time that renders his life and the lives of everyone else in his community and their histories increasingly irrelevant.    Arguably, [Do the Right Thing] was the ’80s east coast version of George Lucas’ [American Graffiti]. Both were coming-of-age films about young men on the cusp of adulthood. Both films featured radio DJs who helped to narrate the film and who physically interacted with the protagonists. Both films were distinctly and uniquely American. Both were also bizarre and fantastic, with the inaccessible and mysterious blond in the Ford Thunderbird replaced in Brooklyn with Rosie Perez’s accessible but not too accessible Tina, the almost four-minute dancing “fly girl.”    Like Francis Ford Coppola’s [The Godfather], students of film can learn a lot about setting, layers/composition, and cinematography from [Do the Right Thing]. Take the scene where Sal and his son have an argument in the foreground with the Korean family and their convenience store in the background minding their own business. Smiley then approaches Sal and his son for a donation. Smiley is sent away off-screen to the left where Robin Harris’ character is, who yells back at Sal and his son. What’s so great about this scene is that the set isn’t the pizzeria but it’s the intersection and it is a set that exists in time and in space (three-dimensionally). This is not just film. This is life. And during this entire scene, by the actions and dialogue of the characters alone, all the characters from all the layers interact with each other according to their established character traits.    When I was done with the film, I watched one of the documentary films and Spike Lee mentioned realism when he was filming [Do the Right Thing]. Yes, the film is realistic. And yes, this film is very much an example of the realist French New Wave, except it was set in New York and not being in monochrome. On one hand, Spike Lee demonstrated a mastery of conventional styles like the directors of the French New Wave and on the other hand Lee rejected them as being insufficient for his artistic needs. There is no happy ending, but only change and unanswered questions. “Did Mookie do the right thing?” “Did Sal have insurance?” “How hot was it that day?” Like those 19th century novelists, we will never know the answers to these questions. And like most readers of J.D. Salinger would know: Not only will we never know why, but also we’re not supposed to. That’s life.