Page 60 - Sonoma County Gazette July 2020

Da 5 Bloods
Love him or hate him, there is no doubt that Spike Lee is a masterful story teller.
Lee directed, produced and co-wrote Da 5 Bloods released recently on Netflix.
Five soldiers who dubbed themselves “Da Bloods” function under the leadership of “Stormin’ Norman” who, to them is their
In Our Time of Dyin’
“Martin and Malcolm”. Tragically he is the one who does not survive.
Four now old soldiers meet again in Vietnam
Black lives have never mattered in America. They’ve been enslaved, ghettoized, minimalized, and shot down like dogs in the streets. Now, they’re perishing from the coronavirus at a per capita rate more than double that of white people. But, it’s nothing new.
ostensibly to retrieve the remains of their fallen leader but also surreptiously to lay claim to a hidden
Forced by extreme poverty to live on the wrong side of the tracks, they were, and are, more prone to the onslaughts of disease, hunger, and violence. Many died trying to drown their pain with toxic substances. That’s on them, it’s said, but is it?
treasure, a cache of gold that they buried so many years ago.
Soon the group of four is joined by Delroy Lindo’s, semi-estranged son who
comes to support his emotionally disturbed father. Now restored to five, the unit needs the help of a another member’s former lover to get the gold out of the country. She in turn enlists the aid of a sleazy international entrepreneur, French actor Jean Reno, to smuggle out the loot.
Over one hundred years ago, black people found blues music to be an outlet for their suffering, and a source of solace. Many took up playing on the streets as a way of supporting themselves, work being largely unavailable. Even some all-time greats like Howlin’ Wolf. Those who were blind or otherwise handicapped found this to be the only way to stay alive.
There are some lovely scenes of the men in colorful marketplaces, and
bars. As they drift up river homage is given to Apocalypse Now. There are also allusions to The Treasure of Sierra Madre and The Bridge Over the River Kwai. They engage a Vietnamese guide who reminds them that some wars never end and that antagonisms and resentments as primal as the loss of a relative never fade. Much intrigue ensues as the men continue their quest. There are double crosses and disagreements and much blood is shed.
Take Blind Willie Johnson,
whose songs have been recorded
by Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and
Ry Cooder. Johnson sang loud and
rough, needing to be heard above
the tumult of the streets, where he
performed blues and gospel. Born
in 1902 in Texas, his mother died
shortly thereafter. At age seven, his stepmother threw lye at his father during a fight, and missed, blinding Johnson for life. In 1947, his home burned to the ground and he died of pneumonia while sleeping in the ashes.
It is evident that Lee has inherited a strong creative bent from his mother who was and arts and literature teacher. (His father was a jazz musician and a composer.) He begins the film with newsreel clips of black activists, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Malcolm X, Mohammed Ali, Martin Luther King. The talking head sections are spliced with actual events. Flashbacks are presented on a narrower screen so that there is never any confusion as to whether the viewer is in the present or the past, a practical technique.
Often considered the primary inspiration for Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, Son House, also born in 1902, spent his childhood wandering with his sharecropping family from one Mississippi plantation to another. He hated
it. Later, he took to hitchhiking and riding the rails, playing his music. He suffered two years in prison for a crime later called self-defense, before dying from both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Most, if not all, of Lee’s films deal with race relations or political issues or issues that are culturally significant. He has produced over 35 “joints” as his films are called. He has a MFA from the prestigious Tisch School of Art at NYU. Besides being a director, producer, and writer he is also an actor and is a tenured professor at his alma mater.
Born in Alabama in 1932, Red lost his mother to pneumonia a week after his birth. At age five, the Ku Klux Klan lynched his father. “In those days there was a lot of lynching and hanging going on and I guess he got caught up in that,” Red once said.
This film belongs to Delroy Lindo. He is the most damaged and tortured of the men. His PTSD is untreated, simmering and dangerous. His performance is powerful and terrifying and the most award worthy element of the film.
He spent most of his childhood with relatives where he was beaten by
his aunt’s boyfriends and an uncle. At an orphanage, he endured a year of mistreatment, often going hungry. In his song “Orphanage Home Blues,” he relates running from the police - ducking into roadside trenches every time he saw a bright light. In “Too Poor to Die” he can’t even afford his own funeral. Still, he spent most of the ‘50s defending his country during the Korean War.
When the original five are in the field and they hear of the assassination of Martin Luther King from Hannoi Hannah, the premise becomes, “why are we killing these people and putting our lives on the line when, perhaps, when we return home to our own country we will get a bullet in the back or maybe a knee on the neck?”
Red settled down, but lost his wife of ten years to cancer in 1972.
If you’ve got to suffer to sing the blues, as the song goes, Louisiana Red always had the credentials for greatness.
Discussing his music, Red said, “I just love the blues. As I play, I see where I come from - the tortures, the beatings, the heartaches - being put out in the streets.”
L to R: Louisiana Red, Muddy Waters, Pinetop Perkins
60 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 7/20