Film: Do The Right Thing
Name: Jing Hou
Student ID: 2733
Date: 2010-04-16
This film Do The Right Thing was released in 1989. Spike Lee wrote this story and directed this film. As a black director, he has his own unique characteristics and performance methods. This film can fully reflect the characteristics and style of Spike Lee’s film. This article will demonstrate Spike Lee’s film features and some filming techniques.
Spike Lee is a famous American film director, producer, writer and actor. His desire is to shoot the real "black film”, so most of his films were involved with the black theme. As a black director, he has intensive experience in black’s habits and social problems,so he always uses his film to really demonstrate black life habits and reflect some serious social problems in American society, for instance race relations, crime, poverty, and so on. So people always call him the best director with the black consciousness.
Do The Right Thing is one of most famous works of Spike Lee. Through this film he demonstrates special local street atmosphere in New York, complains unequal treatment of blacks in America and displays racial conflict. This film also brought him great success. He was nominated for 2 Oscars, other 11 wins and 6 nominated. For instance in 1989, Do the right thing won best director, best music and best picture in Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. In 1990, Spike Lee was nominated best writing in Oscar. At the same year this film also won best director and best picture in Chicago Film Critics Association Awards and was nominated in Golden Globe.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097216/ ;
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097216/awards)
Do The Right Thing describes one-day story which happen in a community in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn where most of people are African American and Puerto Ricans. It is the hottest day of summer. So He uses a lot of warm colors (red, blue, gold, and so on) in background, costumes and decoration .He chooses red as this film’s theme color, which is a color that reflects hot deeply. These bright colors are opposite to the cool theme of this film. At the same time he used music and lines to reflect his special characteristics. As a film of excellent black theme, it was full of Black rap jazz. It also performed a lot of slang and bad language of black daily life.These features were used throughout the whole film.
In the title sequence, accompanied by the theme song “Fight the power”, Rosie Perez dances. Sometimes she wears bright red dress in front of gold background, on other occasions she wears blue dress in front of red background. “Fight the Power” has explosive force in not only tune but lyric as well. Fast-pace music and dance reflect that director is not satisfied with black’s social situation and inspires them to fight.
1. Screenshot shows Rosie Perez is dancing
The first scene in this film begins with an extremely close-up shot, camera focus on an alarm clock and microphone. After a ring of alarm clock, Senor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) consecutively said several “wake up” .These “wake up” not only ask people in the community to get up but also wish people to wake up in mind. Then with a zoom out we can see that he sits in front of the window and narrative the story. From his angle, he can see a lot of things what happens in this community. He tells people not to do stupid thing, which tell us that some bad things will happen. There is a sharp contrast between black backgrounds color inside and red light on his face.
2. Screenshot shows Senor Love Daddy are narrative the story.
The beginning parts in this film describe people’s daily life in this community and introduce several main characters’ personalities. Spike Lee takes a medium shot from a low angle to shoot that Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) wears red shirt and stands in front of red brick church with photographs of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Bright red make people feel very hot. Smiley is a mentally impaired person and always sells these photographs to other people. He is a small potato in this film. In spite of stammering, he points out this film’s theme against racial discrimination, but nobody really notice him. It also has some ironical effects.
3. Screenshot shows Smiley is talking about the photograph in his hand.
In this film there are three men sitting by the street and having a chat. Their background is a red brick wall, which shows that it is a very hot day. In this scene Spike Lee takes an extremely long shot to highlight red background firstly. Then with a zoom in, camera focus on three men from eye level. They observe the community and complain some social problem. But they do not do anything to change these problems. This is real life of majority black; always have nothing to do, constantly complain unfair society without any action.
4. Screenshots shows three men are talking.
Buggin Out (Giancarlo Esposito) is a young man that seems to look for trouble. He is one of people that take action to against racial discrimination in this film. The below scene is the beginning of the conflict. We also see that the flower is red, this film’s theme color appear again. Director takes a medium shot to shoot this scene. Then camera pan from down to up and focus on wall of fame from Buggin Out’s eye level. He notices that there is no one black on this wall. He wants Sal put some black pictures on his wall of fame, but Sal refuse to do this. In spite of Sal has opened the pizzeria in black community for 25 years, he still has deep-rooted racial idea. He looks down upon black and just put American-Italian on his wall. His wall of fame is one of cause of final conflict.
5. Screenshot shows Buggin Out notice the wall of fame.
Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) always takes his big radio with loud “Fight the power” music. He thinks that he has right to do anything that he want. However he never cares about other people’s feeling. Sal does not allow him to play music in pizzeria, which is another cause of final conflict. In this scene Spike Lee takes a medium shot from low level. Then the camera focus on his gold rings with love and hate. His introduces his rings to Mookie accompanied with background music”Fight the power”. In fact director shows that love and hate exist together and conflict in people's minds, these two emotions are static. However the love can defeat the hate through fight. In the below scene Spike Lee uses highlight on love ring, which reflect that he looks forward to a word full of love.
6. Screenshot shows Radio Raheem is showing his rings to Mookie.
Da Mayor (Ruby Dee) is an older man who always drinks a lot every day. In spite of this he always pursuit good things, Mother Sister (Ruby Dee). He often tells other people to do the right thing. He is in favor of non-violence in this film. When other people have some trouble or conflict he always take action to stop bad thing. But he has not enough power to solve every conflict. In this scene he saves a boy who nearly hit by a car. Main background remain red color, even the car close to them is red too. Spike Lee takes a medium shot to shoot and the camera move tracking with Mayor.
7. Screenshot shows Mayor save the boy.
When Radio Raheem and Buggin Out enter the pizzeria with loud music in the evening, Sal quarrels with them. Sal’s some words causes other black’s dissatisfaction. Then he breaks down Radio Raheem’s radio. This action put the conflict to a high level. Spike Lee takes many medium shots to exhibit characters’ action and face. In these scenes he frequently adjusts the camera angle between low shot and top shot. These shooting techniques excellently showed fierce conflict and tense situation. Behind Radio Raheem and Buggin Out, there are two lights. These two lights are faraway and eye-catching in dark background, which reflect that Spike Lee is eager to solve some racial decimation.
8. Screenshots show they are quarreling
At the end Radio Raheem’s death cause the anger of black in this community. Firstly Mookie breaks down the window of this pizzeria with a rubbish bin. Then other black people break down the whole pizzeria. Smiley even lights the shop. It is a tragic ending that Radio Raheem dies, Buggin Out is arrested, and the pizzeria disappears. But there is some success in the tragic ending, which is that Smiley puts the photograph of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King on the wall of fame. Spike Lee reminds people that they can get some return so long as they take action to fight.
In spite of the name of this film is Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee did never tell what is the right thing and how to do right thing in this film. On the contrary, it ended by two totally different quotations, violence and non-violence. These two views inform audiences that nobody can judge right or wrong. People need to realize by themselves what right thing is.
0 comments:
Post a Comment