'Da 5 Bloods'
Like many of his previous great works, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is a history lesson, an urgent call to action, and a philosophical challenge in addition to a compelling story. In some ways, it picks up where BlacKkKlansman left off by plumbing the depths of our recent history and tying it back to our present predicament. But Da 5 Bloods is far more explicit and direct in its approach. The history runs throughout the story rather than bookending it. It reaches back farther in to our past and the present-day echoes are far more audible.
The title is a reference to a tightly knit cadre of Black soldiers who fought together in the Vietnam War. Only four of them returned home, and they returned with an incredible secret. Buried in a hillside in Vietnam are gold bars lost to the United States government, but known to them. Now, the four surviving members are back in country. They are there to reclaim the gold bars, but also to retrieve the remains of the platoon-mate who did not make it back.
Each of the four surviving members has a secret or two - some of them more grave and far-reaching than others. As their happy reunion - decades-old secret handshakes and all - gives way to their quest for gold, the secrets come tumbling out, further complicating matters.
Some of the secrets come out explicitly as they sweat and stagger their way through the jungle. Otis (Clarke Peters) might just have a drug problem; he pops OxyContin, then tosses them out when his old platoon-mates call him on it. Eddie (Norm Lewis) has lost all of his apparent wealth, but is afraid to tell his war buddies until the stress of the moment brings it out.
No one has more secrets than Paul (Delroy Lindo). Some are mundane. He is revealed as a Trump voter, and not the shy type. He wears one of those distinct red Make America Great Again hats for much of the film. Like any enthusiastic Trump voter, he is simmering with rage and resentment. His grievance is well earned. Life haunts him. He was the only of the four surviving members present when the fifth blood, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman), was killed. There is, of course, a painful secret Paul carries about Norman’s death. And there is an unspoken secret, kept from the viewer for much of the film, about another personal tragedy when Paul returned home. This is surfaced by the surprise appearance of Paul’s son David (Jonathan Majors), who joins the surviving Bloods to the occasional chagrin of his father.
Lindo, understandably, has received glowing praise for his performance here. His face is a perpetual grimace. Anger and pain course through him. You can practically see the weight of history on his shoulders. Lindo’s intensity wouldn’t feel so powerful were it not contrasted by his fellow castmates. Lewis, Peters, Majors and Isiah Whitlock Jr.’s Melvin carry that history in different ways. Meanwhile, Boseman is relieved of it entirely. He exists in sepia-infused 16-millimeter flashbacks of the Bloods’ time in Vietnam. He is perpetually young, vital, and resolute. He does not bear the burden of history. Of course, having that weight off your shoulders doesn’t mean much when you’re dead.
At the heart of this film is a question about greed and who is owed what. The Bloods view the gold as their birthright - back payment both for their sacrifice in the Vietnam War and for being Black in America. But the question of what to do with the money conjures very different answers out of the foursome. Some still possess some idealism. Others have been worn down by the intervening decades and so are only concerned with themselves. None of the characters seem to be considering what might be owed to Vietnamese families, but Lee is more than willing to consider this, using the characters’ interactions with locals to point out again and again that the damage of the Vietnam War wasn’t done just - or even principally - to Americans.
If there’s an easy answer to Lee’s interrogations - and, really, there isn’t - it is that individual greed is profoundly damaging. That greed becomes all-consuming when you are made to feel you are on your own - when you forget or maybe never had a good lesson in the power of shared sacrifice, of collectivism. What a message for the middle of a pandemic.
Lee uses the tension of the plot to make this point, but he also leverages film history yet again to strengthen it. There are some obvious and expected references. Apocalypse Now is checked off as they weave their way down a river. There is a Quentin Tarantino-esque feel to the dynamic of the Bloods and to the sudden, astonishing moments of violence. But the biggest film influence here is actually John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. A few of the Vietnamese locals even name-check the classic line about “stinkin’ badges.”
One of my favorite quotes is “what’s past is prologue.” It comes from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and it is emblazoned on the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. What I so love about Spike Lee is that his films make his appreciation of this sentiment so clear, whether it’s American history or film history.
Real history - not the myths more commonly put forth in high school history textbooks - shape who we are. It frames who we need to be to make progress. In Da 5 Bloods, closely held secrets warp the past, while outsized individualism and greed conspire to destroy the present. These are urgent reminders for the moment we find ourselves in - the kind Lee is uniquely capable of delivering.