Like 'Black Snake Moan', Hustle & Flow was one of those films that I basically figured I knew from the trailer which was provocative enough for me to make up a good story in my head. So I didn't bother to see either one, expecting them to be disappointing. It just so happened that Hustle & Flow was on my tube last night. It was an extraordinary film, damned near great.
In one way, Hustle & Flow is the kind of film that people think could never get made, and they're probably right. It feels every bit like the high quality studio tape which is part of the central story. I may have missed the opening scene, which I'm going to have to catch another time, but everything about H&F takes me to a familiarly unsentimental America. In one of its pivotal scenes, the protagonist DJay writes the archaeologist's words for him. In the civilization that follows, one day they'll come digging for what the Memphis ghetto was, and they'll find this music and this film as the bittersweet testimony of the triumph of the human spirit that keeps getting gutshot, disrespected and cursed at.
Hustle & Flow has very much of the right thing HBO has been pimping for the past few years. It's the story of a bad guy who tries to make good in a world of harsh reality. DJay is the macher with no need for a shrink - who knows he exists on the margins of society but still aims to keep his heart as pure as possible, who tries to handle his business the best way he knows how, who tries to keep his head up against all odds, and within that, dreams a little dream. What separates H&F from the exploitative dreck elsewhere is the dream, and the lack of people who go along with the dumb plot line. There is no color for color's sake in H&F. There is no stock character - not even the screaming baby.
Aside from its brilliant location shooting, worlds that team with life among the crumbling city, dialog in dialect is the masterwork of this film. There is such nuance of power and intent, you can feel the articulation of every emotion even when the words get away from you. You get into the souls of people who don't show up as people on any mainstream writer's radar. What does it look like inside of a pimp's house? It's a scene that is never shown unless cops are involved, and so the squalor is always taken as an external view to internal chaos. But nowhere in any film has a simple plate of sandwiches or a lava lamp illuminated so much character. Nowhere have I seen the eyes of fear and love from a pregnant hooker so full. Nowhere in any film have I seen the earth spin over a scrambled cassette tape and heartbreak in a toilet stall. Only Trainspotting comes close.
Hustle and Flow is one of those films that, rather like Saving Private Ryan, ups the ante for the genre. All of the disappointment one can gin up for a sorry half-assed film like Four Brothers becomes immediately evident in comparison. This is the kind of film I had come to expect of Carl Franklin or Charles Burnett. Instead it came out of nowhere. Thank you Craig Brewer. I guess I'm going to go see Black Snake Moan after all.
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