Da 5 Bloods: Spike Lee's denunciation of the Vietnam War

After Chiraq, after BlacKKKlansman, the The 5 Bloods comes to become yet another link in the great cinematic chain of Spike Lee and possibly its most important diamond.

This doubt is bent or raised depending on the perception of each viewer who may consider this film as a production. Netflix better or not of BlacKKKlansman.

In our opinion, Da 5 Bloods is without a doubt one of the 10 best films of the year and we place it above Lee's previous film that went to the Oscar.

Da 5 Bloods is another film of historical denunciation of the unending racism in the United States and this thread unfolds this time focusing on the joint march of 4 blacks who fought in the Vietnam and almost 50 years later they return to the lands where innocent people were slaughtered on both sides, with a mission.

Paul, Otis, Eddie and Melvin want to pay tribute to their leader Norman who died in the war, but also to recover a box of gold bars they buried back then. This box was intended for Vietnamese who were cooperating with America and was a form of reward.

But Norman and his division chose to keep it to themselves, since it was the black race that was being slaughtered in this war, with whites staying behind in the US or hiding behind blacks. Because when 11% of your population has 32% of your military representation, it means you consider them expendable and choose them to die over whites.

So the foursome find themselves back in a place where their lives have stopped, as few can move on after a war. The soul can no longer be in the body. Especially when you have lost a man who tried to imbue your soul with peace in moments when bullets were raining down like a storm around you.

In order to retrieve the pile and the gold bars, they will have to set up a whole operation so that Mama America doesn't have to realize what they are carrying on the return trip.

Of course, there will be no return for any of the 4. But there will be redemption, peace of mind and a release from what gold and Vietnam symbolize for them.

Da 5 Bloods is a story of redemption and repentance, that's the core of the narrative, but Spike Lee makes sure to cover it with layers of surface that make the revelation of the core far from trivial, as a viewer who has seen several such films would expect. Not at all clichéd and very compelling, we'd say, as it has many little shocks, the biggest of all being the explanation of why Paul is the one who seems to be the most tormented by memories.

A huge secret that he kept inside himself and that he does not have the courage to confess to his brothers and sisters even after so many decades, is the one that will mark the way out, the escape from pain, the liberation.

With his main goal of highlighting specific events in black history in the United States, as they unfolded around the Vietnam War, Spike Lee creates a very moving story that fuses the fictional with the real and takes on a very deep meaning to a viewer who understands the world in which they lived and compares it to today.

Because it is important to know that the US was sending blacks like sheep to the slaughter at a time when half the states had Jim Crow Laws as their gospel, i.e. the extremist social separation of blacks from whites. That is, blacks went to defend those they considered inferior. And in the end, their blood wasn't even worth a posthumous honor.

These are messages that Spike Lee manages to share with less weight. That is, he doesn't place an unbearable bulk on the viewer's chest. Through the individualization of the story, by personifying the collective problems in these four men, he somehow lightens the burden and allows the viewer a re-processing without the usual repulsion that comes with difficulty.

It is, simply put, Da 5 Bloods is one of the best examples of films that offer both high quality fiction, but also plenty of food for thought and connection of all the elements that modern man has around racism and the importance of Black Lives Matter, i.e. why it's not a moment for All Lives Matter.

Equally importantly, Lee in his way completely weakens the animosity that war breeds. At the beginning of the film we see a Vietnamese man trying to sell a chicken to Paul. He refuses. The Vietnamese man insists because he sees in the American an opportunity to make a living that he is struggling to make.

The transaction does not take place and then the conflict begins. «You killed my mother and father,» the Vietnamese man yells at him. Shortly afterwards, Paul finds himself exalting the United States over France and talking about his country's martial greatness. But which country? The one that rejects his race?;

So, we have the twist just before the end, in the last scene where Paul appears, where you'll see for yourself how Lee achieves the elimination of those first scenes.

Something similar is happening with the other 3 of the group. So it wasn't just the Vietnamese who died in this war. There were many on both sides. And the past of both sides led many to get involved in a cycle of war, blood, death.

But the time comes to put a full stop and memory becomes oblivion, otherwise there can be no continuity!