SPIKE LEE AND MAGIC REALISM

     Spike Lee's recent premiere of "DA 5 BLOODS" on Netflix brings to mind some comparisons with many of his past movies. His work also  continues to remind this critic of films by Martin Scorsese. Perhaps most interestingly, Lee's latest effort suggests a name for his cinematic style. 

     Declaring that Lee's endeavors are similar to Scorsese's is maybe a stretch, yet both are graduates of New York University's motion picture department ( attending at different times ), depending on documentary techniques that  lend a signature to their movies.  And no wonder, since their academic environment did not include a studio in which to film. Thus, shooting in the streets and on-location elsewhere were the order-of-the-day. Both directors have included documentaries  throughout their career, including Scorsese's early  "Italianamerican" and Lee's "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads." ( His most recent effort is a documentary as well, " If God is Willing, and the Creek Don't Rise.") 

     Scorsese's and Lee's fictional films also include a  documentary style. Consider "Da 5 Bloods," shot in Vietnam. Although  we can argue that some plot devices  don't always seem realistic compared to most of Lee's other fictional movies, the historical clips provide an authentic context. Demonstrating Lee's realism, through a documentary approach, is not the entirety of his method, however. There is also another style at work ( and with Scorsese as well). It is Expressionism, most notably apparent in Lee's  first full-length film, "She's Gotta Have It" (1986). Here we see its most apparent trademarks:  sharp contrasts between light and dark lighting; extreme  up and down camera angles. 

     It has occurred to this critic that when Lee uses color combined with  Realism, Expressionism may become another separate but related style, the film suggesting Magic Realism. ( The only recent movie to evoke such an approach  is "La La Land.")  For example, there's the  color scene in Central Park celebrating Nola's birthday in "She's Gotta Have It."  Then there's Bed-Stuy's colored residences in "Do the Right Thing" ( 1989 ), a more fantasy-like ( and thus "magical" ) way of conveying the neighborhood's reality.

     Another "magic" technique is used consistently throughout Lee's fictional works, although it's more than likely not given any particular significance: consider the shot in "Da 5 Bloods" when the friends are riding in a car down an Asian city street. The foregrounded car image remains still, while the backgrounded street  is moving. Such a play of opposing movement throws the viewer off balance and seems out- of - place. Yet this specific opposition appears in many of Lee's films. Perhaps it's a visual metaphor for Lee's themes or perhaps it's there to call attention to a possible narrative contradiction. Or perhaps these image represent  the idea of magic itself.

    

 "First you see it, then you don't."