NFL
By: Matt Overton
The First Joint
Hi, I’m Matt, also known as Movies All The Time. If I’m not working, I’m probably watching a movie. One of my favorite activities is watching a director’s filmography front to back, in release order. With Spike Lee returning to the silver screen later this summer with his second reimagining of a cornerstone Asian film, now is as good a time as any to watch all of his pictures. Feel free to join me on this Spike Lee marathon
I had planned to watch two Japanese films back to back tonight, but by the time I finished Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear and completed my nightly routine, the two-hour-plus pictures weren’t fitting in my schedule. Luckily for me, Spike Lee’s debut She’s Gotta Have It is a tight 86 minutes, and I had already planned to watch more of his work this year. This was an awesome debut that features so much of what would become Spike’s iconic film repertoire, from the historical pictures spliced throughout, multiple narrators, harsh comedy, and bombastic characters.
Since just learning about this film and the fact that it was Spike’s debut, I’ve had a lot of fun envisioning what the pitch was like. “Listen, man, I know this is my first movie, and I’m an aspiring writer/director/actor, but I have this very progressive, female-forward film about a strong, independent woman, who also happens to have at the very least two, nude sex scenes with yours truly”—Spike Lee circa 1988, probably with the biggest grin plastered across his face.
Nola Darling is all of that and more, a very powerful main character who has a lot of agency. She’s simultaneously dating three men at once: Mars, Greer, and Jamie. The trio couldn’t be any more different from each other. Mars (Spike Lee) is a righteous #ShortKing, a certified sneakerhead, and a loudmouth who speaks his mind; Greer is the high-class uppity one, who models for GQ and secretly wants to date a white woman; and Jamie is the most normal of the three, a man who lovingly writes poetry to the woman of his dreams. All of the main characters get a chance at narration, and it gives the movie a kinetic edge that is always exciting.
The narrative jumps from Nola’s perspective to any one of her lovers at any given time. The black-and-white photography looks incredible, and there’s a lot of creative shadow play. Spike is having tons of fun with his direction, with lots of camera movements. The whole picture is backed by a very catchy jazz score, giving the romance an extra moody layer.
She’s Gotta Have It is an exciting debut from one of America’s most iconic contemporary directors. It doesn’t really have a deliberate political angle like a lot of Spike’s later films, but there is still something anti-establishment about the filmmaking present. There’s a whole lot of Black-loving going on, which I found refreshing. It isn’t often a mainstream artist gets to express themselves this honestly and from the soul quite like this movie.
