Cinema “Denzel and Me, We’re Jazz Musicians”: Spike Lee talks about Highest 2 Lowest

Leave with Spike Lee To reinvent the high -risk remake. Your new movie, Highest 2 Lowesttransforms the classic of Akira Kurosawa 1963, Heaven and hell in a noisy, current and humor adventure (with Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright and A $ AP Rocky) which is as impactful as a dissonant saxophone soil. In a recent conversation of New York, Lee explains your analogy:

“Denzel And me in this movie, we are jazz musicians. We respect Julie Andrews singing ‘My Favorite Things’. But when John Coltrane did, or when Miles made your standard ‘My Funny Valentine’, It’s something else. That’s why I call it reinterpret and not remake. ”

LeeOf course, it has been reinventing our world – always provocatively – almost four decades ago. Since its 1986 indie success,She wants everythingtheir unique humor and peripatetic look give the characters a presumed heroic grace, highlighting open notions of black identity that seem extremely related. Still, he rejects the idea of being a visionary.

“Look, people will say whatever they want, but to me, my choice would be storyteller,” state Lee.

These stories are amazing. More than any other director of your style, Lee It consistently brought art cinema sensitivities to mainstream. His most striking films portray ordinary people living their lives almost “Chekovian”, with small nuances of destination. Each work has a pictorial aspect, where a silent transcendence aligns with a bolder than life.

Highest 2 Lowest It maintains this tension, offering the public a cinematic treasure and a sympathetic Bronx hero in David King (Denzel Washington), a tycoon of music whose wealth makes him the target of an obsessive kidnapper.

THE Rolling Stone talked to Lee about its interpretation of this story, the work with Denzel and A $ APthe meeting with Kurosawa And much more.

RS: What do you think your artistic view arouses in a star as large as Denzel?

Lee: I don’t have … this is him. This is the D. You know, it’s as follows: he’s the star. He is the Jordan And I am the Pippen. [Risos.]but we are a team. This is our fifth work together in order: More and best blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, The perfect plan… That, see, it doesn’t look like it was 18 years ago. THE Denzel said the same. But there was no… we didn’t have to relearn. I mean, it seemed like it had been yesterday. So, I’m just glad we could do it again.

RS: The classical idea of the protagonist seems almost opposite to his work. Do you agree with that?

Lee: I don’t think. I know what you are trying to say, because I was very successful with collective cast movies … But the five movies I made with Denzel They were also very successful. So I’m going with the flow, you know? And, look, you can’t make a half-assed movie [risos] with the Denzel. So you have to do what you have to do.

RS: This time you faced a giant, updating Heaven and hellfrom Akira Kurosawa. Why did you choose to reinterpret this movie?

Lee: One of the reasons why I love this movie from Kurosawa is that he talks about morality. What do people do when they are put in certain situations? You need to remember that a writer called Ed McBain [pseudônimo de Evan Hunter, nascido Salvatore Lombini] wrote the book [King’s Ransom, no qual Céu e Infernofoi baseado].

So, first it was an American novel, then Kurosawa adapted to the cinema. I wanted to make it clear that this is not a remake. It’s more than that. But at the same time, respecting the source: the book and the movie. Kurosawa It’s one of the cinema giants and one of my favorite filmmakers – and I still met him! I am a collector, and one of the things I value the most is a beautiful portrait of Kurosawa that he autographed to me.

And he signed the autographs with a brush and white ink. So I looked many times to that while filming. [Risos.] One of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

The film I first saw at Nyu’s film school, when I had contact with world cinema, was Rashomon. It is a movie where there is a murder and a rape, and he, Kurosawaleads the audience to doubt who is telling the truth.

I used this premise on my first movie, She wants everything. We have Nala Darling, and she has three boyfriends, and the three talk about who she is. And she talks about the three boyfriends she has at the same time.

RS: Do you think there is more pressure on you to portray what is worthy and noble in black experience, and sell it to culture in general?

Lee: No, I don’t put this kind of pressure on myself. And blacks are not a monolithic group. We do not do everything the same or think the same. So I never – or try not – get angry. You know, when I get criticism from my brothers and sisters … My Chicago brothers and sisters didn’t like [meu filme de 2015 ambientado em Chicago] Chiraq[risos].

RS: Serious?

Lee: Well, you don’t live in Chicago. No, they didn’t like this movie at all.

RS: Wow. It makes sense to say that you are not doing something specific to blacks as a whole. Because I think this idea itself would already go against everything you always represented. It has always been wider, more diverse –

Lee: We are so diverse and so many things. So, to say, “I’m doing just one thing, there is only one version of the black people,” I mean… I don’t think that is smart.

RS: You think it’s more Jackie Robinson or Satchel Page?

Lee: Look, this is a crazy question. I say this because my daughter’s name is Satchel. And my mother’s name is Jackie, Jacqueline, so … [risos]But I think the name you give to a child has a lot of weight. He knows? And we black, and I say it with a lot of respect, we invented names! [Risos.]

RS: Takisha, Shaquanda…

Lee: I swear to God! We invent names! [Risos.]but that’s what we are. It’s who we are. Let’s keep doing this … I mean, look … we are creative!

RS: There is an epic scene in Highest 2 Lowest where a pursuit in the subway happens at the same time as the party stop party of Puerto Rico.

Lee: This is my tribute to the director Billy Friedkin And to your movie Operation Francewith Gene Hackman. And it’s funny: the great sequence of the pursuit of the subway, the high train, begins at the station next to my school. So they filmed while I was in high school, but I was in class, so no one knew that was happening outside. And I hope people will come back and watch Operation France. A big, great movie. Please watch Operation Franceagain. Promise me that, right?

RS: I promise I’m going to watch. What is your funniest or most interesting memory of the interactions of A $ AP ROCKY with Denzel on the set?

Lee: For years, people, not only me, said that the Rocky could be the son of Denzel. For years they said that. And I asked the Rocky About that. He said, “Yeah, because of mine” – his big ears. So, having the honor and the pleasure of putting these two, face to face in a scene, this is generational.

But it is as follows: Rocky It was not passing by an actor. He is an actor. And it came in with everything, because I knew it needed. I couldn’t … this is the Denzel! So his posture was, “I have culhões too!” [Risos.] And that only increased, for me, the dramatic force between the two in the movie and where their characters are. A generational conflict, besides the rest that happens in the plot.

RS: Yeah, the Rocky It really did it very well on paper, brought a lot of energy.

Lee: It was authentic, wasn’t it?

RS: Too authentic.

Lee: Rocky It’s from Harlem, bro! [Risos.] And the Denzel It has such a great presence that people are even in their legs if they need to face it directly. This is his power. And if you do not match, it will be swallowed. But the Rocky Said, “Fuck it.” [Risos.] You know, in sports: the best games are the balanced, disputed. There is no game when one team massacres the other. There is no drama in this! Are you right or wrong?

RS: It’s true. Equal to the last season of the Knicks.

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