From 5 Bloods - Like Brothers: Spike Lee tells about true America
But if Da 5 Bloods could not make its appearance at the Croisette, it has found visibility in the current news even greater. The events that are tearing the States apart regarding the difficulties of the African American population are much more than a simple internal issue and are the consequence of a social policy of the States that has very deep roots, including the gloomy page of the Vietnam War. A chapter in modern history that has indelibly marked more than a generation of Americans, and that has presented a salty bill to the African American community.
Telling racism in contemporary America And it is in Vietnam that Spike Lee sets his story from start to finish.
During the conflict, a group of black American soldiers, led by foreman Norman 'Tornado' Holloway, is sent on a recovery mission for an aircraft of the CIA shot down on Vietnamese territory, to bring back his precious cargo. Discovered what the cargo consists of, a chest full of gold bars, the soldiers decide not to bring it back to the base, but to use that wealth to do something good for their people at home, deciding to bury it and come and recover it at the end of the conflict. But the reality of the conflict presents a severe account, Norman Holloway is killed and buried by friends near the treasure, with the promise of returning to recover both the gold and the corpse of their friend.
Fifty years later, the four survivors of the team (Paul, Davis, Otis, and Eddie) will return to Vietnam to finally give as a result of this promise. Waiting for a journey that will lead them to having to deal with not only their relationship, but the consequences to the long denied, of a war that has presented a heavy account to the soldiers that have fought, giving Lee the chance to tell the America of today, the daughter of the errors and horrors of a nation that seems to not want to learn from your mistakes.
Spike Lee has always given an accurate vision of militancy and commitment in his own career, and to arrive on Netflix just in these troubled times with a story like 5 Bloods is comparable to a sign of destiny. Talk these days of the commitment of the soldiers, blacks in Vietnam is not only another vision of one of the injustices suffered by these americans have forgotten, but it is also a way to create a parallel between the war of blood and bullets, fought in the sweltering asian jungle, and the social clash that raged in the territory of country, that had Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John Lewis.
In Vietnam, the Norm had become for his fellow soldiers to their mentor, who they saw as “ their Malcolm and the Martin” . The character played by Chadwick Boseman , despite appearing a little in the movie, is the emotional bond between the characters and the story contemporary. The message that is given by Holloway is strong, more than ever, and hovers for a large part of the film, especially as a result of his words to the brothers come back to America after the conflict.
A legacy of moral that is interwoven with the wounds never healed, these four guys back from a hell on Earth , emphasized thanks to a perfect scan of the times used by Lee. The alternation between the present and the past blends with the best in building a modern vision of Vietnam, where the war veterans are almost out of place, remembering it as a place of death and violence, not conceiving the new identity is modern and geared to the reconstruction after a bloody war. Ironically, the vision of Vietnam, a bright and vital, seems to oppose to the four americans, whose words you evince their condition is unchanged compared to when they were fighting “ a war is immoral, that was not our” .
Four souls in search of redemption
And it is in this dissonance that is the validity of the 5 Bloods . Taking as a touchstone the enemy who has scared, for decades, the America, which has profoundly marked the social life, Lee shows how in reality for african americans nothing has changed. They have fought two wars, the soldiers of color, and in any case this blood shed has helped to change their situation. The bitterness and despair of this condition continues throughout the film, embodied in particular by the figure of Paul, a monumental, DelRoy Lindo , and Otis, played by Clarke Peters .Tap to Clean, however, the palm of the best. For the duration of the film, his Paul is the driving force, the good and the bad, a soul that clings to the memories of Holloway as an opportunity to remedy a life of errors, caused by the loss of the guide that he had found in Holloway that broke the soul. A drift from the inner leads him also to support Trump, the incarnation of evil par excellence, transforming Paul in the instrument of Lee for a social criticism, biting and merciless, but at the same time human and cpacae to give life to a character tragic, wonderful. Neat touches at the heart of the spectator with a veteran at the same time pitiful and hateful, mad in his desperate search for redemption from a sense of guilt overwhelming, coming to a peace long overdue after one of the monologues, the most intense and exciting of recent times. Fundamental for this man to pieces, the presence of the son of David ( Jonathan Majors ), who becomes the catalyst for emotional growth in the film.
The emotional framework 5 Bloods counts on intuition Lee: do not use CGI. Contrary to his colleague martin Scorsese, who has abused it to The Irishman , Lee, let the actors interpret their self more young people, without alterations. At first glance it seems like a choice that is incomprehensible, but slowly this detail helps to create a greater empathy with the four faces old and tired that we see throughout the film.
Lee tells of the America of today
Despite the setting and the flashback, From 5 Bloods has nothing of the war movies that have chronicled the Vietnam . But that was not the intent of Lee, who wanted instead to tell another chapter of the injustices experienced by the population is african-american. The few action scenes do not break the narrative pace of a story that, despite starting with a tone seemingly mild, does not fail to quickly get to a point where relationships and emotional pressure, culminating in a journey of regret, desire for revenge and despair.Lee opens and closes his film with historical footage of the original, which fit the best in his narrative structure. The fictionalized story of these veterans fits beautifully on actual History thanks to these flashbacks, filmed in a way to also have a point of vision with respect to the present. Also key is the soundtrack, which are the area music of the period , with a selection that goes from the Ride of the Valkyries by coppoliana memory until the voice of Marvin Gaye. Everything to build a predisposition emotional in the audience that the approach to the poignant story of these boys become men broken. Lee does not fail to create a synergy of violence, that not only touches the agnherie endured by the black population in America, but also the atrocities that the ferocity of the stars and stripes he inflicted on the vietnamese, and creating a brotherhood that goes beyond the color of their skin, but based on the suffering.
In a period like the present, films such as From 5 Bloods and the other proposal on the topic of Netflix, Detroit , are the visions that help contextualize what shakes the company overseas, not limited to simple gestures in the name of a belated politically correct, but offering the tools to really understand the long marches of the civil and the daily horror for the black population of the united States.
