The summer of 2012 will go down as the time when the U.S. dominated at the Olympic Games in London and maverick Black filmmaker Spike Lee released Red Hook Summer, his first offering at the box office since his World War II pic Miracle at St. Anna and the latest in his Chronicles of Brooklyn series. The screenplay was co-written by Lee and author James McBride, who grew up in the community of Red Hook.
The film stars veteran actor Clarke Peters, best known for playing roles in HBO’sThe Wire and Treme, as long-suffering martyr-in-the-making Bishop Enoch Rouse and newcomer Jules Brown as his grandson, Flik Royale. The cast includes female lead Toni Lysaith in the role of Chazz Morningstar, a neighborhood girl who befriends Flik, transforming what had been an unbearable trip north into a time of discovery and fun. Other prominent characters include the Deacon Zee, played by Thomas Jefferson Byrd, a sot who spends much of his time in the basement of the church philosophizing about the faults of Blacks; Sister Sharon Morningstar, Chazz’s ever-vigilant mother and a potential next wife for the bishop, played by Heather Alicia Simms; and Box, the leader of the neighborhood band of red-hanky wearing thuglies, potrayed by Nate Parker.
Red Hook Summer is a coming-of-age-in-a-summer tale for Flik, a middle-class boy from Atlanta who is dispatched to spend some time with his grandfather in Brooklyn’s Red Hook community after his father is killed in Afghanistan. Flik’s mom thinks he needs to get to know his grandfather and soak up a little Brooklyn color to balance his life as a pampered child (“In Atlanta, my house is four times as big as this!”) who sulks around Red Hook in a designer watch and expensive sneakers, chronicling his comings and goings on an iPad. But though the film is ostensibly about the boy, as the action progresses, the focus shifts increasingly to the preacher, relegating Flik and his adolescent angst to a subplot behind the preacher’s quest for whatever it is for which he’s questing.
From the minute the film opens, it seems as if there is a sinister presence lurking near that at some point will jump out of the closet or rise from under a bed to scare you. It feels like something is going to happen. Conflict begins early in the film when Flik and his grandfather find themselves as odds over everything from what to eat (“I don’t eat chicken. I’m a vegan,” Flik tells the scrapple-and-eggs eating preacher.) to religion. Bishop Rouse, who lords over a 2/3-empty small house of worship, uses his pulpit to rail against the evils of Black society and White interference in his beloved community, referencing the cruise ships that dock nearby spewing smoke and “giving our kids asthma.” Away from the pulpit, he continues to proselytize, once observing, “You think this is hot, you oughta try hell!” Despite being self centered, there is nothing in Flik’s behavior that indicates that he been overcome with sin, yet his grandfather talks to him like he’s headed for the depths of hell.
“Somebody needs Jeezis in their life,” he told the congregation, standing mere inches from the boy.
The early part of Red Hook Summer is an enjoyable watch. The church scenes, with bobble-headed deacons cheering the pastor’s every word to the dissonant sounds of loud praisers, provoke laughter. Lee’s cinematography, characteristically magical, is again excellent, with characters and scenes in the colorful community popping to life through his lens. The characters take you back: the strutting and sassy Chazz, the girl you knew in high school who challenged authority, marched to her own drum and got a scholarship to someplace cool like Howard or NYU; Sister Sharon, the single mom who has pledged that her daughter will have more choices than she had; the Jehovah’s Witness clutching a handful of Watchtowers, the gang boys throwing dice on the asphalt, local residents converging outside to share community and escape the oppressive heat of unair-conditioned apartments.
And Mookie is back, still strutting through Brooklyn delivering pizza from Sal’s, elevated now to “Mr.” status, older, but no less popular as he briefly moves through the neighborhood.
The best moments are those with Bishop Enoch extolling the virtues of living right, arms raised skyward and adorned in elegant robes, working up a sweat in his attempt to save his flock. The scenes between the pastor and Flik are appropriately uncomfortable as they attempt to catch up on 13 years. The sweetest moments occur between Flik and Chazz, whose presence lifts the film and his spirit as she helps the too-serious Flik to find his inner adolescent. There is a chemistry between them that makes their scenes sparkle.
SPOILER ALERT: The film turns sinister, however, when a stranger who has been sitting in the church comes forward one day to confront Rouse for molesting him when Rouse served as the pastor of his family’s church 15 years ago. The molestation is depicted in a flashback where music plays in the background as the pastor caresses the boy and manipulates him into capitulating while holding and quoting the Bible. It is revealed that Rouse was caught and paid to leave the congregation. He gave the money to his daughter, who used it to buy the fancy house about which Flik bragged.
At a viewing of the film at the West End Theater Aug. 16, the audience sat still as the molestation scene played. There was no applause at the end of the film, only a few sparse claps. Lee told the Wall Street Journal that the molestation scene was the most disturbing scene he’d ever shot.
It was equally disturbing to watch. Unlike the morality lessons in some of Lee’s films–that treating people badly will come back to haunt you, as Bleek Gilliam learned in Mo’ Better Blues, that hate will explode in Do the Right Thing–this attempt falls short. At the end, Enoch thanks the church pianist for his support when the young man tells him he does not believe he molested anyone. A repentant man would have set him straight.
In a roundtable discussion of the film the next day at Eatonville restaurant in the U Street area of Northwest Washington, Lee scoffed at the notion that it was improbable that a mother would send her adolescent male child to stay with a man with Enoch’s past when she had indication that he had changed.
“For 15 years the bishop had tried to reconcile,” he said. “Her husband died in Afghanistan. She broke down and said he needs to see his grandson. They are family. This happens all the time in families that are not you or I. You hear Black people all the time who say, ‘If that n—– put his hands on me, I’m leaving him.’ But how many Black women do you know who…is still there?”
Red Hook Summer opens Aug. 24. The running time is 121 minutes. It is rated R for brief violence, language, and a disturbing situation, according to the film’s website, www.redhooksummer.com.
