Un-lee-shed: Mo' Better Blues

This is the third in my bi-monthly 2019 series watching (most) of the Spike Lee films I haven’t yet seen.

June brought my first audible in Un-lee-shed. I had to call it when I couldn’t find the movie I was intending to watch, Get on the Bus, available on any streaming service I subscribe to, at the library, or on iTunes. In fact, most of these services returned a strange message when I searched for the title, which was (and I’m paraphrasing here) “I haven’t even heard of this movie. Go get stuffed.”

So I did, and watched Mo’ Better Blues instead.

Which was fine, as I actually thought of Blues as the more “significant” Lee movie I hadn’t seen than Get on the Bus, and iTunes obviously agrees. The main reason I preferred Get on the Bus for this series was that I wanted to do a bit of a jump forward in time, rather than watching a third movie within a span of five years on the calendar after She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze. When paired with Four Little Girls, which I intend to watch in August (assuming availability), the summer months could make a good “middle section” to Lee’s career.

But instead it was the best fashions 1990 had to offer in Mo’ Better Blues.

I was indeed a bit distracted by the fashion in the movie, which of course I remember only too well from the time, but which now seems hopelessly specific and dated. And since the 1990s have not yet been fully reclaimed as an era for us to nostalgically revisit at the movies, I felt only the mild repulsion to that fashion, rather than the sentimentality.

But this movie is not about fashion. It’s about jazz. Or blues, I guess, though to me it seemed a lot like jazz.

It stars Denzel Washington as Bleek Gilliam (great name), a trumpeter who leads his own band (featuring the likes of Lee, Bill Nunn, Giancarlo Esposito and Wesley Snipes, all regular Lee collaborators, though this was the first for both Washington and Snipes). Bleek is two-timing two women with each other, though they kind of know it. One of these is Lee’s sister, Joie, who was in almost every Lee movie to that point and still appears in them today, most recently Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. (She’s also on the She’s Gotta Have It TV show, which Lee produces.) The other is an actress I knew I recognized, Cynda Williams, ultimately identifying her (with the help of the internet) as the star of One False Move. That’s a really good movie I need to see again.

Story? What story? It’s pretty much a slice of life of these characters over a number of years as Lee’s character gambles himself to within an inch of being beaten to death, Bleek tries to juggle the women without losing either one, Esposito bristles over the band’s treatment of his white (and French) girlfriend, and Snipes wants to break out on his own. There are a lot of musical numbers incorporated in, to good effect. And a lot of “Lee-isms” are being played with here, like cameras that swoop in to close-ups, dolly shots, a forlorn jazz score, and Brooklyn street life.

But I felt toward Mo’ Better Blues as I did the two previous films in the series, though I guess I gave 3.5 stars to She’s Gotta Have It and three to School Daze. I’m at three stars again here. All three of these films provide useful insight to Lee’s growth as a filmmaker, but I guess I’m not shocked that I missed them. They aren’t essential, and this is probably the least essential of them.

As I was watching this, I wondered how well the movie he released next, Jungle Fever, would hold up today. It didn’t hold up well for some people at the time it came out, but for me it seemed nearly as urgent in its own way as Do the Right Thing, though obviously for different reasons. The Samuel L. Jackson performance in that movie was the real standout, as I remember. If I watched it today – either for the first time or as a revisit – I’d probably be just as distracted by the fashions, but hopefully still engaged by the themes.

As I said, Four Little Girls is on tap for August, if the gods of availability see it fit to oblige me. Otherwise ... Girl 6? Clockers? We'll see.