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GET ON THE BUS
Directed by Spike Lee
What has always made Spike Lee’s films stand out to me so much is that they are about the characters he presents more than they are about a specific plot. In GET ON THE BUS we are presented with some of Spike’s best characters, some of the most alive and real characters that have graced the screen in a long time. The film follows a group of black men from Los Angeles to Washington, DC on their bus trip to the Million Man March. This group of men are so diverse - an amateur filmmaker, a gay Republican and his lover, a father and son at odd with each other, chained together by court order, an older man who is a spiritual leader of sorts, an actor hoping to get a part in Denzel Washington’s next movie, a Muslim, a cop, and a Republican who is farther to the right than Ronald Regain that joins the group somewhere in the middle of their trip. Each one of these characters is played by an actor who seems to real, so natural in his role, that I forgot that I was watching actors in a fictional film.
There are those who think of Spike Lee as a bigoted man, a man who believes that the black man is god, and the white man is the devil. To them, I would like to point out a scene in this film. After their bus breaks down, the group gets a new bus with a Jewish driver. At a rest stop the new driver tells one of the members of the group, the man who planned the trip, that he will not be driving the rest of the way to DC. Why? Minister Farakahn had stated that Hitler was a good man in trying to eradicate the Jews. How would a million people who follow this man react to seeing a Jewish man driving a bus that brought in a group of black men? The bus driver refused to finish the trip out of fear and disgust over this racism. If Farakahn, the leader of the Million Man March, is promoting this kind of anti-Semitism, how does this make the marchers look? United behind bigotry?
When the group finally reaches Washington, DC, one of them becomes ill and is taken to the hospital. The others decide to wait for him at the hospital and miss the march. Instead, they themselves hold a march or sorts. This intimate little march is, to we the viewers, much more unifying than the much more epic rally earlier that day. We know more about them, we know their diversity - a father and a son at odds, a cop and a former gangmember - and we see that these people are unified for one sole reason: they are all human.
My Rating: ****
Review by Jared Mills
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