Chi-Raq Blu-ray Review
Piece and quiet.
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.
Chi-Raq Blu-ray, Video Quality
Chi-Raq is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot digitally with Red Epic
cameras,
Chi-Raq has a nicely sharp and well detailed image, one that benefits from some unusual production design and costuming
choices that offer a nicely varied palette (check out Jackson's suit and tie combo in screenshot 2 for just one example). Lee and cinematographer
Matthew Libatique (
Noah,
Straight Outta Compton) ply two different tacks here, offering an almost
verité ambience in and around the South Side neighborhood, while indulging in various bells and whistles (including those aformentioned
text cards, graphical elements, and freeze frames) at various times. While generally sharp and well detailed, especially in close-ups, a couple of
sequences look at least relatively soft, including a long sequence surrounding a golden bed late in the film. Contrast is strong throughout the
presentation, offering support for good to excellent shadow definition even in some very dimly lit scenes. There are no issues with image
instability or compression problems.
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