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Do The Right Thing. The title itself is an admonition to do what is socially and morally right. But, this is nothing new for a Spike Lee 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks production. And, Spike Lee knows well how to make the best use of the camera in getting his point across. That's a given, if you're at all familiar with his work: each film has a message that is socially and morally oriented. In this 1989 offering, Spike did not deviate from the magic formula.

Cinematography can make or break a movie. Spike uses the scene's set-up, focus, and angle of the camera shot in partnership with the actor and his (or her) dialogue. In Sal's pizzeria, Buggin' Out asks him why he didn't "put some pictures of brothers" on the walls. The shot was of Buggin' Out, eating his slice and staring up at a wall filled with white actors. To emphasize, the shot drew in tight, filling the screen with close shots of Stallone, Sinatra, and Di Nero-each in his own black-and-white close up. Though the question had been directed to Sal, before he could respond, the camera pans to a startled-faced Mookie and the stunned expression frozen on the face of one of Sal's sons. We know what Sal thinks of the question and expect the response delivered in a voice and demeanor that leaves no doubt how he feels about the opinions of his customers.

When Mookie tries to convince the mother of his child that she should trust him, her response is reinforced more by her gestures and how she says it than by what she says. We understand her skepticism through the total picture of dialogue and body language caught by the camera. To get the point across to his viewers just how hot it is, the heat becomes a character. Shot after shot, Lee shows us just how hot it is. Summer in Brooklyn, residents sitting where they can best catch any stray breeze that just happens to blow their direction. Three old guys sit on the sidewalk in, what we just somehow know is, their favorite spots. Wisps of heat wave and shimmer before them. We feel the heat rising off the pavement even where we sit in the audience. Da Mayor sits on the stoop; Mother Sister, in a window and Mookie's sister, Jade sits glued before an area fan. Out in the street, kids from age five to twenty jump and frolic, clothed, in a pilfered stream from a fire hydrant. We get it. It's hot!

Tight shots gave the overall frame a look with a more personal feel to it than a wider angle would have allowed. The effect was that less would fit the frame, but more emotion would emit from it. The result: the viewing audience felt they were more than front row, center watching the action on screen, but were more intimately involved with the action on the screen. You tended to forget this was just a movie, rather you invested a portion of your energy in the events as they unfolded. Cinematic magic makes the late 80s film appear aged, more from the mid-'60s. What he did with She's Gotta Have It in black-and-white, he does here with a vintage film finish. This technique gives the story a back story with the theme silently lurking in the background. We know what 1960s America was like, what it must have been like in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community of Brooklyn, New York City. The cinematography for the riot scene did just that-lighting, set design, reset the clock on an era in American history that pushed the rewind button for many of our memories, coaxing us to participate. I'd be willing to bet Spike knew exactly what he was doing.

To paraphrase Mookie: "You got it? I'm gone."

Learn more about this author, Edwyne Rouchelle.
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