Chi-Raq (2015) [Blu-ray]
Comedy | Crime | Drama | Musical
Chi-Raq is a modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play "Lysistrata" by Aristophanes. After the murder of a child by a stray bullet, a group of women led by Lysistrata organize against the on-going violence in Chicagos Southside creating a
movement that challenges the nature of race, sex and violence in America and around the world.
Storyline: After the shooting death of a child hit by a stray bullet, a group of women led by Lysistrata organize against the on-going violence in Chicago's Southside creating a movement that challenges the nature of race, sex
and violence in America and around the world.
Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, February 4, 2016 Spike Lee and Yip Harburg might not seem to share much in common other than unusual first names, but there's another kind of interesting connection between the
African American filmmaker and the Jewish American lyricist. Most will no doubt recognize the name of Lee, the often provocative auteur who hit the ground running with She's Gotta Have It and who continued to court controversy with a number
of subsequent films including School Daze, Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. Chances are unless you are a lover of stage and/or film musicals, you may not have the same familiarity with Harburg, though he was one of the most
influential lyricists of his era, pumping out a long list of classic tunes for both stage and screen that include such timeless masterpieces as "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", the many standards from Finian's Rainbow including "Old Devil
Moon", "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" and "If This Isn't Love", and the lyric for which he won the Academy Award, "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz. But despite their obvious differences, Lee and Harburg both share a fairly left leaning,
progressive stance on social issues (it's important to remember the whole racial subtext of Finian's Rainbow, something that sometimes gets subsumed by the whimsy of the "magical" element of the show), an aspect that unites these two otherwise
disparate artists in a kind of general way. More specifically, however, both men share another rather peculiar trait—they both adapted Aristophanes' legendary comedy Lysistrata, the tale of women who are sick of menfolk always fighting, and who
decide to band together to deprive those men of sexual favors until they all calm down. Harburg adapted this provocative source material into the short-lived 1961 musical The Happiest Girl in the World, where Harburg and the creative team took a
page out of the approach fostered by Robert Wright and George Forrest, two Broadway writers who had hit the big time adapting classical composers' music into popular song formats for musicals like Song of Norway (based on the music of Edvard Grieg)
and Kismet (based on the music of Alexander Borodin). In this case, The Happiest Girl in the World recycled tunes by French composer Jacques Offenbach, albeit with Harburg's often extremely playful lyrics attached.
Harburg and the rest of the creative crew behind The Happiest GIrl in the World pretty much kept the original setting and plot of Aristophanes' original for their musical reboot, but Lee contemporizes the story while also retaining "Greek" elements
like a virtual chorus, as well as some character names. In fact the woman who comes up with the whole "no sex until peace" angle is indeed named Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris), though her boyfriend in this version bears the nickname of Chi-raq (Nick Cannon),
the same soubriquet that has been applied to the South Side neighborhood of Chicago, since incipient violence often makes it seem like it's a warzone overseas (i.e., Iraq). The tragic gang killings that have made Chicago a frequent headline in any
day's news cycle are rather viscerally depicted by Lee in a number of ways, including an early scene where little "text cards" appear over dead bodies (see screenshot 8), but probably even more effectively when a young mother named Irene (Jennifer Hudson)
stumbles onto a scene where her little seven year old daughter has become the latest victim of gang warfare.
What's remarkable about Chi-Raq is how Lee rather amazingly manages to tether an unusual, even whimsical, style to what is in essence a rather tragic tale of a neighborhood under assault. This seemingly disjunctive presentation is on display from
the first moment, as a rap song detailing the horrors of Chicago's South Side is accompanied by what amounts to a purely graphic visual element (see screenshot 6). By the time this film's "chorus" a nattily dressed narrator/commentator named Dolmedes
(Samuel L. Jackson), snaps his fingers and "freezes" an audience at a rap concert, it's obvious that Lee has thrown caution to the wind and is going to offer this story on his own terms, tradition be damned.
Lee's at times hyperbolic visual sense may actually detract a bit from the underlying sadness of the film's subject matter, but in arcs like those involving Irene or a somewhat older woman (an effective Angela Bassett) who takes in Lysistrata for a while
there's copious emotional content. Lee's tendency to push buttons is firmly on display, and some may find his depictions of at least a couple of the white folks in the film on the provocative side (the less said about the Caucasian gentleman wearing
Confederate flag underwear while "riding" a cannon, the better). But for a filmmaker who many had insisted had "permanently" lost his way after disappointments like Oldboy, Chi-Raq is an almost startling return to form for Lee.
Spike Lee and his "joint" are back, baby, and Chi-Raq is a rip roaring entertainment virtually every step of the way. What's so remarkable about this film is the unlikely marriage of style and substance. Some may find some of Lee's putative comedy
misplaced, but the film packs an undeniable emotional punch and is certainly a provocative rethinking of Aristophanes' still relevant play. Technical merits are first rate and Chi-Raq comes Highly recommended.
[CSW] -1.9- Maybe I'm old and out of touch but as a black man that grew up in Chicago leaving only to go to college, I failed to see the humor in this Spike Lee adaptation. Having worked at a national laboratory in a small but highly educated town, there
was very little street hustle going on and most of it was isolated from the main population. So I have to believe that by being that out of touch, I missed not only the humor but more importantly the plot well enough to come away with something to really
think about. It wasn't that I didn't understand the problem and the proposed solution but nothing that I felt I had to think about during the movie or afterwards. That means that I found nothing unique or for that matter that entertaining in this film.
Spike Lee didn't push the envelope for me this time. All things considered, a truly outstanding cast, great presentation and well thought out mostly poetic lines. But it was a movie that just didn't move me.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box
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