Delroy Lindo Sets Black Masculinity Ablaze and Then Shows Us Redemption in “Da Five Bloods"
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It’s an incredibly difficult balancing act telling a story centered around Vietnam vets, that does not cater to propaganda about the military industrial complex and patriotism, that is honest in its portrayal of various forms of racism traded back and forth between different oppressed people's being used as tools against one another, and that offers a unique version of black masculinity that is so much freer from the normal rigid portrayals of black men from this time, but Spike Lee has done it in his Latest “Da 5 Bloods” and its central spigot is the performance put forth by veteran actor Delroy Lindo. Lindo's performance is a full bodied reckoning with black male masculinity and trauma that finds so many vibrant, symphonic, movements and sounds it’s easy to compare it to one of the great classical symphonies, or better yet, the masterful compositions of Quincy Jones as pain and release. It is performative jazz, with a clear intention and racing improvisation along the way. It’s all to tell us a story about a man we may all be familiar with, just not this intimately. He gives us a backstory to the folk we have come to despise relaying a tragic sorrow to the men we’ve lost to racism and patriarchy.
In the beginning it’s not made instantly apparent, ( but damn near) that Lindo's Paul is a shell of a man, much like so many mortars left behind in a war he was conscripted to fight in, on behalf of a country that never loved him, or his people. There came a point in the movie when he says “We fought in an immoral war that wasn't ours for rights that weren't ours”, and I thought “this is kind of the underscore of this movie”, the ghost around which this shell is wrapped. They are powerful words that speak every bit as much to Paul's inciting incident of trauma as does another poignant scene involving forgiveness. Lindo in every way sevices this role with an intelligence, an almost prophetic fire , and an intensity and emotional sincerity that governs his every move. Paul is a Volcano. A rock of a man, who refuses to move from the birthplace of his harm, filled with burning resentment that explodes in repeating intervals making it hard to be around him. Lindo adds features that further explore his bodily agitation and mental unrest as it appears on his body. There's constant shifts in his weight, his mood, and even the wrinkles in his face. His voice trembles, he seems to be reaching for his breath on occasions where he has been triggered, and the script and Lindo work together to let us know this is because he is repressing, and by the time the movie nears its end we will find out exactly what it is he's been holding. His clueing us in is important because even if subconsciously, it validates the experience. The great Arthur Lessac - the famed voice and body coach created his “Lessac Method” to show the connection between the body, the voice, and health, which in turn can also be used to show a lack of it. Changes in the potency of ones vocals or movements, or the ways in which they radiate can suggest to an audience exactly what's going on physically or mentally with a character in a way that doesn’t constitute “acting” because accessing that particular wavelength informs our bodies as what to do. It’s very funny how tapping into a certain action will bring you to an emotion. Sanford Meisner (Another extremely famous acting teacher) devised a technique that might involve banging your fist to find anger, in Lessacs case, quivering ones body would not only inform the audience of your frailty, but you of your own. Lindo whether through training or not seems to understand in ways very few actors can or have these concepts, and deploys them profoundly.
Later when we see Paul at a bar with Eddie (Clarke Peters) Paul will allude to this pending reveal in the movie again speaking to the fact that “his pain is different”. As he thinks on it Lindo covers his mouth, (again repression) he almost cries, but he holds it in, he says “I Saw him die”. We don't know yet what it is, how it is, what that is, we allow it stand on its own, because it stands to reason considering. He closes his eyes, it’s coming again, he wrinkles his mouth to one side, contorts his face round the left eye to fight it back, swigs his beer and its gone... the bucket is sent back down to the well.
What Paul carries is the same water many black men carry, and have carried, and more importantly he carries it how most black men carry it. It can be said that while black women carry burdens alone because they have to, and in many ways are left with no other choice, black men carry burdens alone voluntarily under the belief that they want or need to, informed by their sturdy belief and not-so well hidden admiration for white patriarchal power. In that way Lindo’s Paul transcends the screen and reminds us of the pain we inflict upon ourselves and those closest to us, by not even reconciling with our own trauma.
“The wounded child inside many males is a boy who when he first spoke his truths was silenced by paternal sadism by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings - bell hooks”
Later on in the film, after yet another explosion- Paul rebukes his own child for a perceived betrayal, the trauma continues to be generational. Much of what forms and constitites Paul’s anger is betrayal - betrayal by people, a country ,and ultimately life, and he passes this down, and around to those who love him most. Paul heads off on his own, as he moves on further into this breakage and into the foliage of the jungle, he begins to scream, we don’t realize it yet, in fact it seems as though he's only diving deeper down regressing into a manic state of cantankerous madness the pinnacle of which Lindo explores with the kinetic genius of Dizzy Gillespie, and the focused intensity of Denzel - but we are being fooled by our own bias, he's beginning to break, and as Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire once said in the titular film, “Breakdown - Breakthrough”.
Not always, but on occasion when the breakage is deep enough, on the other side of a breakdown is a breakthrough. Lindo's primordial yells are spiritual in nature, and they are painful, and representative of his need to let it it all out, but still he is holding back, still he is holding on, and I’ve heard very few things like it. It’s as if someone merged the spiritual energy of Robert Mitchum singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” in Night of the Hunter, and the purging menace of Deniro speaking in tongues in Martin Scorcese's Cape Fear..
Paul finds redemption in the form of accountability through literally facing his ghost. He was infected with poison, the poison of betrayal and grief, and finally it’s being sucked out. Lindo himself speaks of the fact that he informed Paul's ideas, his very traits with this exact intention and purpose, with this poisom. In an interview with “The Daily Beast” he says..
“In the process of creating a biography for Paul I also placed in a number of other personal betrayals so we have the large betrayal of the country and the culture and then we have the betrayals that I had suffered- the loss of my wife, the loss of my son. When I say the loss of my son, I mean the fact that the relationship is as fractious as it is. That constitutes a loss, because I cannot interact with my son and express the love that I have for my son in the way that I would like so those are two very, very deep-seated losses”
Creating an actor biography ( a backstory beyond the script) is indicative of training for actors, it has a long history and it's a powerful factor in deepening the connection between actor and role. But Lindo’s intellectual approach to this particular character also showed a understanding of the common attributes that plague black men in our society (especially one of his generation) and that connection not only deepens our connection to him through our own experiences or our understanding of the experience- but also deepens our understanding of the character. Paul is a rusted relic of a war not only waged by a country to another country, but also by country on its own peoples. Like so many of those landmines left in Vietnam he too was left there, and also like them, once triggered he's bound to explode. This explosion reaches out beyond the screen and spreads emotional shrapnel onto any audience member viewing it. Touching them, hurting them, triggering them, but at the highest moment, the very peak moment of the performance it provides us with secondary emotional catharsis through the journey of redemption that Lindo brings us all on through a number of minutiae and larger performative activities that remind us of Lindo’s genius, and our own struggles for emotional and physical freedom from a world that hates us, and more importantly from ourselves. When the movie ends we find that in fact it is only beginning, and Lindo is where we are all at, or at least where we need to see ourselves at. The entrance and intrinsic change that starts with accountability and taking down the ghosts of our collective and individual pasts. Once more bell hooks..
“For me forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their Humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”
