GET OUT

Get Out is, perhaps, the angriest film about American race since Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in 1989. In this context, anger is not a bad thing. It certainly wasn’t during Lee’s time, and although it cost his film the Oscar attention it deserved, it is one of the most resonant films that no one seems to be watching during this time in our country’s present. But I digress. Get Out will probably fall under a similar fate because it is so passionate and morosely aware of the black/white binary.

Also sharing in similarity with Lee’s film is how the picture is often funny. Do the Right Thing is so because of Lee’s character, Mookie, walking down the street and essentially having the film happen to him (that is, up until the climax). It is an objective sort of humor, day-in-the-life. And it is funny because of the typecasting of blacks and whites/Italians, somehow finding the appropriate line of idiosyncratic rather than stereotypical. Get Out is a cheekier humor, aware in every frame that the audience knows, deep down, how horrifying many of the characters are from the underbelly.

The director, Jordan Peele, is a skilled comic actor and writer himself, and brings to the table such sensibilities. I won’t get too wrapped up in Peele’s background, as I don’t want to pretend to know is work more than I actually do. But what I gather from him as an offscreen entity is his meticulous attention to diversity. Sure, the racial tension is palpable between Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose’s (Allison Williams) parents, played by Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford. For those even marginally aware of the film’s marketing, there is no surprise in the hostility Chris finds when he visits for the weekend. While I think some expectations and surprises were a bit on-the-nose, the build-up to a strangely satisfying climax pays off.

Racial conflict and compromise isn’t what I took from Peele’s direction, however. He is a biased man behind the camera. He makes it abundantly clear that there is good and evil in the film, there is not just black and white, but hospitality and hostility, justice and lawlessness. This is not a white-bashing film, but a spotlight for the director to say, “Here, something like this is still going on in my eyes.”

It is a fearless directorial debut. I think even great modern cinema tends to tiptoe around the opposition and find unity. That is likely what happened in 1989 when Do the Right Thing was probably seen a startling and violent film - violent, that is, socially, not blood and gore. Get Out has an opinion, and Peele is not afraid to let you know his take.

***½