Spike Lee Ages Well?

Catching some of the Spike Lee retrospective going on in Paris has been interesting. The main reason is because Spike’s movies aren’t enjoyable to me like they used to be once upon a time, when I was gung-ho about the black filmmaking wave 20 years ago. (Yes, School Daze was 20 years ago, and it wasn’t even his first film.) A smaller reason is, for someone who doesn’t usually see movies more than once, I’ve seen the majority of Spike’s oeuvre several times and I’m still a little worn out by the repeated viewings. I love Prince too, but I just can’t play Purple Rain again, not in this lifetime. (Okay, maybe once more.) Then again, I can’t well imagine Hollywood without Spike Lee either. I am very glad his body of work exists; still, I’m honestly not in the mood for another three hours of Malcolm X.

Spike spoke tonight at the Cinémathèque Française, after a premiere screening of Miracle at St. Anna. Unfortunately, it turned out to be just for members of the cinémathèque (membership is available to anybody for probably something like 100€ a year), so I didn’t see Spike or his new film. But I did pay for 25th Hour and Clockers so far this month – Summer of Sam is tomorrow – and here’s what I noticed as a 37-year-old seeing these movies for the umpteenth time:

• All the Seal music in Clockers.
• A reminder of how that pre-screening of 25th Hour (I see you, Kenji) made me want to move to Paris. The closing sequence had Ed Norton dodging his prison sentence to start an anonymous life far away from New York, raising a family under an assumed name somewhere in Bumblefuck with his one true love. Something about the idea of disappearing completely and never being found appealed to me even then.
• The DJ Dust party sequence in 25th Hour. “Flava in Your Ear,” “Warm It Up Kane,” “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” and all that Cymande music? Classic sequence.
• The NO MORE PACKING subliminal billboard that pops up everywhere in Clockers. Black people unite and put down the steel.
• Rosario gotdamn Dawson in that silver dress, 25th Hour. Took me back to that time she showed up to the Oneworld office back in the day waiting for the editor, 15 minutes just me and her. (What happens at Oneworld stays at Oneworld, Rosario.)
• Speech comes up in the hardest MC debate between the drug dealers on the benches in Clockers. Why? I’ll mail you a dollar if you’re in your twenties and you even know who Speech is.
• The last lines of 25th Hour put weight in the lump in my throat, reminiscing on the expatriate adventures I’ve had since the movie first dropped: “It all came so close to never happening. This life came so close to never happening.”