The enormous number of low ratings here -- without a review -- is troubling. Who's afraid of Spike Lee? He's been a provocateur from day one, and when I see one of his films, I'm reminded of Faulkner's saying that all great novels are shipwrecks. All Spike Lee joints fail too, but they fail in a fabulous, provoking, brilliant manner that no other films by a living person seem to manage. Let's go back to Spike's equally brilliant and offending film Bamboozled, and the opening words, in a V/O:
"Satire. A literary work in which human vice or folly is ridiculed or attacked scornfully. B. The branch of literature that composes such work. 2. Irony, derision or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice or stupidity."
And that's what Spike does, at his best. And this is one of his very best: a scatter-shot, no-holds- barred, old school Greek comedy, with Jackson's "Dolmetes" as its one-man chorus -- in short, a provoking work for our times.
"Satire. A literary work in which human vice or folly is ridiculed or attacked scornfully. B. The branch of literature that composes such work. 2. Irony, derision or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice or stupidity."
And that's what Spike does, at his best. And this is one of his very best: a scatter-shot, no-holds- barred, old school Greek comedy, with Jackson's "Dolmetes" as its one-man chorus -- in short, a provoking work for our times.