Get on the Bus (1996)

Directed by Spike Lee. Starring Roger Guenveur Smith, Andre Braugher, Charles S. Dutton, Harry J. Lennix, Ossie Davis, Isaiah Washington, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, De’Aundre Bonds, Hill Harper, Richard Belzer, Bernie Mac, Wendell Pierce, Steve White, Albert Hall, Gabriel Casseus. [R]

Spike Lee’s timely, engrossing microcosmic dramatization of the Louis Farrakhan-“sponsored” Million Man Marsh on Washington in 1995, released on the one-year anniversary of the event. It tracks the cross-country trek of a bus full of about fifteen passengers from Los Angeles to D.C., each one possessing his own motivation for attending the march. Vivid, complex personalities clash on varied terms—constructive, combative, curious, etc.—while bringing up some incendiary and all-too-relevant topics, and Lee finds an empathetic balance among the perspectives (the “black Republican” voice is dismissed comically, but Spike gonna be Spike, and how can that kind of detrimental, self-hating attitude be treated as anything other than a lampoon target anyway?). Garrulous and episodic, but also urgent and passionate, giving voice to many issues unspoken by mainstream media outlets and educational overview courses of the time. Lee doesn’t even let Farrakhan off the hook for his controversial anti-Semitic/white comments, and although some viewpoints and prejudices are a little too forthright (or overwritten) to be fully creditable in the enclosed environment, the dialogue can’t be accused of lacking intelligence and Lee’s thematic ambitions can’t be accused of being diffident. Randy Quaid makes an uncredited cameo.

83/100