DIRECTOR
Spike Lee
SCREENWRITER
Reggie Rock Bythewood
PRODUCERS
Bill Borden
Reuben Cannon
Barry Rosenbush
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Elliot Davis
MUSIC
Terence Blanchard
EDITOR
Leander T. Sales
CAST
Richard Belzer (Rick)
De'aundre Bonds (Junior)
Andre Braugher (Flip)
Thomas Jefferson Byrd (Evan Thomas)
Gabriel Casseus (Jamal)
Albert Hall (Craig)
Hill Harper (Xavier)
Harry Lennix (Randall)
Bernie Mac (Jay)
Wendell Pierce (Wendell)
Roger Guenveur Smith (Gary)
Isaiah Washington (Kyle)
Steve White (Mike)
Ossie Davis (Jeremiah)
Charles S. Dutton (George)
Joie Lee (Jindal)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 120m
U.S. release: October 16, 1996
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Other Spike
Lee joints
reviewed on this website:
- Bamboozled
- Clockers
- 4
Little Girls
- He
Got Game
- Malcolm
X
- Summer
of Sam
- 25th
Hour
|
In
the days after the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., it
was interesting to see it through the wary lens of the white
media. We heard about Louis Farrakhan (what's he up to this
time?). We heard about the whiff of sexism in the men-only gathering.
We heard about the hopes and doubts that African-American men
(seen, as always, as a monolith) would find peace in unity, especially
in the tense days after the O.J. verdict.
What we didn't hear about, except in sidebars and snippets, was
the human element. What did the March mean to the men of wildly
different backgrounds, generations, and beliefs? Spike Lee's
Get On the Bus throws us in with fifteen men who seem
to have been selected for maximum friction. The movie, which
rarely leaves the bus, is almost African-American Buffalo.
It's a feat of metaphor and rhetoric -- a lot of talk before
the "real" story happens (the March is seen only in
fuzzy video clips near the end).
One can almost imagine Lee and scripter Reggie Rock Bythewood
checking off their list of types. There's the gang-banger turned
Muslim (Gabriel Cassus), the biracial cop (Roger Guenveur Smith),
the downsized old-timer (Ossie Davis), the gay couple (Isaiah
Washington and Harry Lennix), the camcorder-toting Spike wannabe
(Hill Harper), the absentee dad (Thomas Jefferson Byrd) and his
wayward son (De'aundre Bonds), the arrogant actor (Andre Braugher),
and a trio of drivers (Charles S. Dutton, Albert Hall, and Richard
Belzer).
That these men are types, not stereotypes, is due mainly to the
performances. Bythewood's script isn't bad -- it's sometimes
very good -- but it's full of speeches and actor's moments. In
this brand of drama, everyone must stand and unfold himself while
Lee zeroes in. Get On the Bus is Spike Lee's first feature
in which he doesn't appear onscreen, though the kid with the
camera is his obvious surrogate (at one point, Charles Dutton
waves the kid away dismissively and says something like "Okay,
Spike Lee, get the camera outta my face"), and Lee's camera
itself becomes a character. The movie is grainy and jump-cutty,
like Lee's other recent films, making visual jazz out of talking
heads.
Lee knows he has a potent metaphor in the bus itself, which resonates
with memories of Rosa Parks and school busing. The vehicle of
past oppression becomes a symbol of forward movement toward empowerment.
You're either on the bus or you're not. Some of the men have
doubts, and Richard Belzer, as the Jewish driver, elects to get
off. He misses the point, but then so do a few of the passengers.
Of the actors along for the ride, veterans Dutton and Davis offer
their usual impeccable gravity (though a tragic plot twist mars
Davis's characterization). Washington, of Lee's Clockers
and Girl 6, is fine as the bitter Gulf War vet who found
himself doubly ostracized as a gay black Marine. Braugher, of
TV's Homicide, is bitingly funny as the egotistical, womanizing
actor.
Get On the Bus, in the end, is a film in the form of a
question: Are you on the bus or not? Are you going to stand still
or help move things forward? The black men in the movie answer
in different ways. But we don't have to be black or male to find
the question relevant, or to seek our own answer. |