Red Hook Summer
Spike Lee’s style can feel messy as hell. Handheld cams and three minutes of a song, a belted anthem with lyrics, playing underneath dialogue? Yeah, that’s in here. Child actors who learned their lines moments before the camera started rolling? It sure seems like it. Jarring jump cuts that are meant to make an argument hit harder? You know it. Lee is a filmmaker who should give anyone aspiring to get behind a camera the gumption to go for it. There are many aspects of this, and honestly, lots of Lee’s films, that feel like they don’t work to me. But somehow, they always seem to add up to a movie greater than the sum of their parts.
Red Hook Summer follows the story of a young Black kid from Atlanta who “talks white,” Flik Royale (Jules Brown), who spends his summer in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood with his grandfather, Da Good Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters), a devout Baptist preacher whom he has never met. Struggling with the culture shock and his grandfather's strict religious beliefs, Flik finds solace in his friendship with a local girl, Chazz Morningstar (Toni Lysaith). As he navigates his way through the summer, Flik is exposed to Brooklyn's vibrant life and diverse cultures. However, the film takes a dramatic turn when dark secrets from Bishop Enoch's past come out, challenging the community's faith and Flik's perception of his grandfather.
Flik carries an iPad with him everywhere he goes, constantly filming anything and anyone, even if they don’t want it. Some people really don’t want it. It’s an interesting autobiographical choice to tell one’s story in a modern setting outside of the time they grew up, and it hints at the type of filmmaker he would grow up to be, pointing a camera in directions that make people uncomfortable. Lee has always made movies for the moment, and in telling his own story, he is no less in the moment: substituting things like iPads for cameras and the internet for whatever the sin du jour was back in the day. Lee wants his films to hit the viewer, and in his mind, there’s no better way to do that than to keep it dialed into now.
Lee has a particular knack for filming the heat: In Do the Right Thing (1994), he captures the shimmering asphalt, the beads of sweat on his characters' brows, and the languid movements of a community trying to stay cool. This meticulous attention to detail visually communicates the oppressive heat and serves as a metaphor for the simmering tensions and boiling frustrations that characterize many of his narratives, adding a palpable intensity to the atmosphere and the story's emotional landscape. In Red Hook Summer, he amps up the color even more: it practically jumps off the screen, with bright hues and saturated tones that bring the still un-gentrified streets of Brooklyn to life, reflecting the culture and community of Red Hook. This vivid color palette enhances the film's themes of youth, discovery, and conflict, creating an overwhelming visual experience that feels fun and exciting at first but makes you want to go home by the end. It immerses you fully in the sweltering summer where the story unfolds.
The emotional climax of the film is challenging. It’s intensely uncomfortable, and as many critics have pointed out, it feels like it comes out of nowhere. But again, similar to Half of a Yellow Sun (2013), life can sometimes feel out of left field. Why shouldn’t films? This is a righteously furious film that you won’t tell is burning until it bursts into flames.
One early line from Flik seems to foreshadow Lee’s oeuvre:
Flik: “Isn’t Jesus black?”
Bishop Rouse: “We don’t know what color Jesus is.”
Flik: “Why is he white then?”
Red Hook Summer
Written by Spike Lee and James McBride; Directed by Spike Lee
2012
125 minutes
English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Available on Mubi and Hoopla
You’ll like this if you like: Anything by Spike Lee, The Florida Project (2017), Boyz n the Hood (1991)