Chi-Raq

So I saw Chi-Raq yesterday. I went to bed still thinking about it, woke up still thinking about it, and though I need to keep cranking on the new novel, I can see I’m not going to get much done until I exorcise these Chi-Raq thoughts.

CHI-RAQ Trailer from 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks on Vimeo.

First, let’s just get out of the way that the movie is extraordinary. On a variety of levels, but maybe most of all in the range of its tone. It moves repeatedly and effortlessly from satire, camp, and fourth-wall-breaking sequences, including some almost hallucinatory dance numbers, to gut-wrenching, cinema-vérité style human drama. I’ve never seen a movie that had me alternately laughing so much at its antics with language and imagery, then crying so hard at its tragedies. I think part of the reason it affected me so much is that the satire was making me drop my guard. And every time I went for the over-the-top head fake, Spike Lee launched an incredibly real shot right up the middle that landed like a blow.

So yeah, Samuel L. Jackson is a scenery-chewing joy as a one-man Greek chorus, and the poetry of the dialogue is exuberant, and David Patrick Kelly’s out-of-the-blue nod to Dr. Strangelove is crazy and hilarious…and then you watch a lone Jennifer Hudson sobbing while she tries to scrub her recently murdered daughter’s blood from the pavement; or listen to John Cusack’s tremendous centerpiece as a Chicago pastor whose oratory channels tragedy into outraged determination; or see Angela Basset’s face dissolve in grief and fury at an insurance salesman’s attempt to capitalize on Chicago’s murder demographics; or realize from the look in his eyes that Nick Cannon’s conscience is belatedly asserting itself…and you just go to pieces.

Pray 4 My City (explicit version) - Nick Cannon from 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks on Vimeo.

Not that the movie’s aim and impact should be so terribly surprising: it clearly and powerfully signals where it’s going right from the opening credits, via a giant blinking all-caps red message on a black screen: THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. Yes, it is. And it’s mind-blowing that a society could treat tens of thousands of annual gun deaths as anything but.

Overall thoughts: the writing, especially the poetry, is incredibly inventive; the direction, from an initial tracking shot following an L train down to neighborhood street level and into a nightclub, is virtuoso; Teyonah Pariss’s performance is a jaw-dropping tour de force (and that smile...my God); the theme song, Pray 4 My City, is still in my head…but these already impressive pieces add up to something much larger than the sum of their parts. More than anything else, Chi-Raq is a political movie, a story about the human impact of gun violence, societal neglect, and fucked-up governmental priorities. Some people won’t approve of that. I wish there were more movies like it.