25th Hour doesn’t care about black people.
Today this happened:
One of my coworkers whom is not white said to me, “You said “25th Hour” was a good movie, but you didn’t say it was going to be THE MOVIE.”
Then this happened in my brain:
25th Hour is one of if not the (along with Good Will Hunting and Empire Strikes Back and movies involving Hobbits) greatest film I have ever seen. I don’t remember the first time I watched it because every viewing washes together onto a beach of amazing art that I love to lay on. It also makes me appreciate life and art simultaneously whilst smiling (it’s an awesome beach). 25th hour was directed by Spike Lee. Spike Lee’s works excluding “25th Hour” revolve around the sun of race relations in America like some sort of bizarre racial heliocentricity. “25th Hour” has nothing to do with race.
It explicitly says so in the most beautiful way possible and I have to think, “How does this make Spike feel?
The most famous scene from 25th Hour is when Monty the films protagonist (for lack of a better term, [and a better cliché]) looks in the mirror and proceeds to eviscerate with great disdain every minority in New York City and upon conclusion illuminates that none of his feelings towards racial groups matter really, that his current lot is of his own design. This scene essentially illustrates that race relations, in the grand scheme of things, are but a scapegoat, that one’s own life decisions trump all. What matters is not the city, not skin, not circumstance, but one’s actions.
And it’s never talked about again even though he is dating a Spanish girl whom he doesn’t fully trust. Race never comes up for the remainder of the film.
Race relation is Spike Lee’s wheelhouse. It is the very essence (or antithesis interestingly enough) of “Do the Right Thing.” and in the first act of Spikes masterpiece, such things are dismissed unequivocally as not only frivols but distracting. As if Larry Bird had walked out of a Celtics game due to the triviality of the concept of hustle. The catch is that in this instance the Celtics still win and Spike outdoes himself.
Spike has yet to make a movie that enters the orbit of 25th Hour. He attempted to make a war film (Miracle and St.Anne’s) and a heist film (Inside Man [excellent but not exceptional]). It’s as if he went about his career refusing to acknowledge that he made a movie that consumed his previous work in a conflagration of irrelevancy.
He made a movie that was about friendship. It made its point only after it poignantly showed that race is but a distraction. He made a movie with amazing actors (Barry Pepper, Ed Norton and Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and made them talk about their relationships because they had only 25 hours to do so, and they happen to all be white.
My question is simple, “Spike, do you love or hate the fact that your greatest accomplishment has absolutely nothing to do with any of the themes you once held dear? Does this bother you? Are you aware that the movie you made about men going to excruciating pains to honor their friends has touched me and men from every walk of life? Does this amount of irony make you smile or cringe?”
I really want to know.
Black people, white people, purple people, purple people eaters.
I think we all do.
Either way.
Thanks.
See you tomorrow,
DGO
