Spike Lee makes a remarkable drama out of neighbours who cannot agree about the pictures on a pizzeria wall. A few conversations run long; the performances, humour and force of the filmmaking make this an unreserved recommendation.
Do the Right Thing is funny, angry and unusually generous to people behaving badly. We would recommend it widely, though it is not an easy evening. Spike Lee, who writes, directs and plays Mookie, sets arguments about race inside the ordinary business of sharing a neighbourhood on the hottest day of the summer. The neighbours have enough life beyond their grievances to make us care about how they treat one another.
The dispute over who appears on Sal’s pizzeria wall is the clearest example. What might sound trivial when described becomes a precise question about who is welcome, and on whose terms. We laughed at the argument, then felt uncomfortable about laughing, because the demand for representation is reasonable even when the conversation becomes ridiculous. Lee lets the comedy continue without making the complaint disappear, and the scene gives the film a practical question that a longer, politer speech could easily lose.
Danny Aiello lets Sal’s warmth and stubbornness coexist, so the performance never gives us the comfort of a simple label. Giancarlo Esposito makes Buggin Out’s insistence funny without making it easy to dismiss him. Lee plays Mookie with less outward force, a useful contrast in such an emphatic ensemble. Bill Nunn gives Radio Raheem enough weight to command our attention without competing with everyone else’s talk.
Ernest R. Dickerson’s saturated colours make the heat seem to press on everyone in the frame. The brightness contributes to the irritation; there is little visual relief from having to occupy the same space. Wynn Thomas’s production design gives the pizzeria wall enough prominence to make the dispute about representation easy to grasp. The pictures are part of how the business presents itself to the people who use it.
Barry Alexander Brown’s editing allows the neighbourhood encounters to accumulate without hurrying each one towards a confrontation. The conversational pace lets the humour work, while leaving room for a remark to become an irritation. Bill Lee’s score helps preserve the warmth of the neighbourhood, alongside a soundtrack drawing on hip-hop and jazz. That musical variety suits a film in which the pleasure of sharing a street remains evident even when sharing it becomes difficult.
The looseness has a cost. A few exchanges linger after their point is clear, and Brown’s patient cutting cannot make every detour equally rewarding across 120 minutes. Lee occasionally relies on the energy of the company to carry a stretch that needs a sharper change of pace. These are small frustrations, but they matter in a film whose strongest conversations make us attend to every change in tone.
As a drama about racism, it refuses the comforting idea that getting to know someone will make their prejudices harmless. Lee gives his characters jokes, loyalties and reasons to be aggrieved, then expects us to judge what they say and do. That is a demanding way to spend an evening, even with this much humour. Watch it with someone willing to argue about the pizzeria wall after the credits.
