Movies

At the heart of “Aviva” is a familiar love story between a man and a woman, with a familiar arc of romance, breakup and reconciliation. Yet in its first frames, the movie, written and directed by Boaz Yakin, announces several ways that the telling will be unusual. A naked woman looks at the camera and informs us that the character she plays is a man.That’s not all. The woman, Bobbi Jene Smith, also tells us that she is a dancer and choreographer, which is true in real life. She tells us that she is acting and that the creative team — she introduces the camera operators — decided that because this fictional film includes much dance, it was better to ask dancers to pull off the acting instead of the reverse.Already, the film has established what’s fresh about it: its questioning of gender, its use of dance not as an entertaining interlude but as a primary mode of expression. Already, it has established a self-conscious tone that undermines its formal boldness and wit.[embedded content]The main characters, Aviva and Eden, are each played by two actors, one male and one female, representing the dual aspect of each self. Sometimes, they swap in and out; sometimes, three or four of them share a scene — bickering, taking sides, having sex.This device allows for novel angles on love, marriage, jealousy and friendship. It suggests a universal multiplicity of gender. At its best, it results in surrealist comedy, playing on the psychoanalytic idea that whenever two people go to bed together, many others are in the bed with them.Choreography by Smith (with contributions from her husband, Or Schraiber, who plays Aviva’s male side) enlivens the movie in a mode indebted to the Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, in whose Batsheva Dance Company Smith and Schraiber spent many years. The dancing is gutsy, sensual, uninhibited and a little too full of itself. Pride in frank eccentricity pushes at times into the unintentionally absurd. Still, it’s exciting how these dance sequences are treated like any other scene, and disappointing when the compulsion to justify them takes hold.Those strengths and faults apply to the film in general. Yakin, best known for the unsubtle, conventional “Remember the Titans” (2000), has given himself a free hand to experiment. But that hand remains heavy, as when a flashback to gender confusion in Eden’s childhood is underlined as an obvious “Rosebud” moment. The surprising choices grow less surprising. A daring film becomes less daring than it might have been.AvivaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on virtual cinemas. More

The South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, who began his career completing films at a relatively swift pace, has been on a real tear lately. Because of the vicissitudes of distribution, viewers in the United States who follow his work are catching up with it out of production order. “Yourself and Yours,” reviewed last week, was made in 2016, and this week’s “Hill of Freedom” in 2014.Coincidentally, a jumbling of time is related to the content of the movies themselves. “Hill” is predicated on a particularly daring temporal arrangement.[embedded content]It opens with a young woman, Kwon (Seo Young-hwa), picking up a collection of letters at an office. She opens and begins to read them; the male voice-over is in English, presumably the only language this Korean woman shares with the writer, Mori (Ryo Kase), who is from Japan.On the way out of the building she drops the letters. She hurries and picks up the pages, reassembling them in a random order (and leaving one of the pages behind). So the remainder of the movie recounts Mori’s adventures in random order.He had come to Korea, and taken a room in a bed-and-breakfast, to find Kwon and propose marriage to her. But she’s nowhere to be found. Hanging out at a nearby coffee shop, whose name gives the movie its title, he develops a friendship with a woman there, and that evolves into a romance. He also hangs out with the blustery nephew of the woman who runs the B&B. None of these interactions keep him from growing ever more downhearted over his inability to reach Kwon.The ingenuity of the movie’s structure is stimulating and delightful, but there’s one aspect of “Hill” that some may find a trifle exasperating: Even more than any of the sad-sack men who populate the director’s other movies, Mori is kind of a stiff.While something of an intellectual — he expounds to a couple of characters on the book that he’s carrying around, one about, yes, the nature of time — he’s almost stunningly passive in his personal exchanges. It’s a testament to Kase’s talent that he sells Mori’s defining trait so convincingly.Have patience with him, though. The movie’s ostensibly mild twist ending has a lingering irony that wouldn’t register had the character been more assertive.Hill of FreedomNot rated. In Korean, Japanese and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 6 minutes. Watch on virtual cinemas. More

“The Surrogate” feels like the vexed progeny of an elevator pitch and an ethics advice column. Written and directed by Jeremy Hersh, the movie begins with a scene of its heroine, Jess (Jasmine Batchelor) on a date. Her suitor is ardent, and she’s trying to make clear that what he takes for ambivalence is something different. One senses she gets this a lot, appealing as she is. There’s a hard cut to black and then Jess is rejoicing over the positive results of a pregnancy test.Has she had a change of heart? No. She’s carrying the child of her best friend, Josh (Chris Perfetti), for him and his husband, Aaron (Sullivan Jones). Jess is black, as is Aaron, and Josh is white. Anyway, everything is fine in idealistic liberal Brooklyn until the fetus tests positive for Down syndrome. The trio’s agreement did not take this possibility into account, and the development raises tough questions for them.[embedded content]Hersh then bears down on the viewer with varied weighted observations. The movie visits a community center specializing in education for children with Down syndrome. It also alights on the home of Jess’s upper-middle class parents, who have very upper-middle class aspirations for the daughter as she weighs her options. All the while, Josh and Aaron pause, and dither and pause again. Eventually Hersh drops the hammer and shows them as the glib and shallow bourgeois brats he clearly had conceived them as all along.In the hands of a deft satirist, the movie’s punchline — because that’s really all it is — might have been mordantly funny. But as it stands, the whole enterprise feels like something the classic-Hollywood problem-filmmaker Stanley Kramer might have come up with, if he were a sadist.The SurrogateNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More

Here are a few of the best events happening Thursday through Wednesday and how to tune in (all times are Eastern).An Alvin Ailey GalaThursday at 7:30 p.m. on FacebookThe Alvin Ailey organization continues its monthslong effort to bring dance into our homes — this time with its first-ever “Ailey Spirit Gala” global broadcast. The event will feature Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the rising stars of Ailey II, young dancers from The Ailey School and students from AileyCamp — along with special guests including Angela Bassett, Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom, Jr., Timothy Shriver, Lorraine Toussaint and Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. The D.J.s D-Nice and Ms. Nix will also be on hand. Among other things, the gala will raise funds to support scholarships to the Ailey School and AileyCamp.When: 7:30 p.m.Where: The Alvin Ailey Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo channels, as well as the “Ailey Spirit Gala” website and the Alvin Ailey website.A Tribute to John PrineThursday at 7:30 p.m. on YouTubeJohn Prine, the country-folk singer-songwriter who inspired Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and others, died in April of complications from Covid-19 at 73. On Thursday, a virtual celebration of his life — “Picture Show: A Tribute Celebrating John Prine,” featuring musicians, actors and friends — will premiere. The tribute includes memories and songs as well as never-before-shared footage of Prine. Along with other charitable organizations, the event will raise money the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Alive, whose grief center is providing free counseling sessions to anyone in Middle Tennessee who’s lost a family member to the pandemic.When: 7:30 p.m.Where: John Prine’s YouTube and Facebook channels.Explore Broadway as It Was and Could BeThursday at 7 p.m. on the New York Times Events websiteTurn down the house lights. It’s showtime. “Offstage: Opening Night,” from The New York Times, is an expansive live program with some of the stage’s biggest stars — including Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Katrina Lenk, Patti LuPone Jeremy O. Harris and Mary-Louise Parker — who will gather virtually to perform and discuss songs, scenes and stories that defined a year like no other. Wesley Morris, a New York Times critic-at-large, will moderate a portion of the conversation. Afterward, Times critics and journalists — including Ben Brantley, Jesse Green, Aisha Harris, Amanda Hess, Nicole Herrington and Michael Paulson — will share some of their favorite moments of the season, and the moments that they wish they could have seen.When: 7 p.m.Where: The New York Times Events website. R.S.V.P. here.‘Black and Queer in America’Thursday at 6 p.m. on Instagram LiveThe actor and dancer Dyllón Burnside (“Pose”) is bringing together friends and influential members of the L.G.B.T.Q. and black communities during Pride month with a new conversation series called “Black and Queer in America,” which premieres Thursday. First up: the Emmy Award-winning actor Billy Porter (“Pose”); Alphonso David, the president of the Human Rights Campaign; the writer, director and activist Janet Mock; and Mayor Steven Reed of Montgomery, Ala. (You can also watch Burnside’s new PBS docuseries “Prideland,” which explores personal stories across the American South, on the PBS Voices YouTube channel.)When: 6 p.m.Where: Dyllón Burnside’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages.Stacey Abrams Talks With Sen. Kirsten GillibrandThursday at 6 p.m. on 92Y OnlineStacey Abrams, a Georgia Democrat who vied to be the nation’s first black woman governor in 2018, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, will come together to talk about Abrams’s work to advance voting rights, the 2020 election and Abrams’s new book, “Our Time Is Now.” The live event is hosted by the 92nd Street Y. Tickets are $20.When: 6 p.m., and ticket holders can access the discussion in the future.Where: 92Y Online.Dive Deep With Ocean WeekThursday starting at 3 p.m. on the EarthX websiteEarthX and National Geographic’s Ocean Week celebration wraps up Thursday night with a several online events, including talks, film screenings and reality experiences — drop in on conversations with experts and scientists about Australia’s ridges, reefs and sharks; and catch the virtual-reality film “Virtual Diving with Underwater Earth.” See the full calender here.When: Events start at 3 p.m. and run until 11 p.m.Where: The EarthX website.‘We’re Still Here’Friday at 3 p.m. on EventbriteEventbrite has teamed up with New York City Pride, San Francisco Pride and other L.G.B.T.Q. organizations for a 12-hour digital Pride celebration, “We’re Still Here: Celebrating Pride in Solidarity,” to honor the roots of Pride and the current fight for civil rights and to showcase ways to lift up the black communities. Events include “A Mental Wellness Moment” with Laqwanda Roberts-Buckley; a rare full- length screening of a Fathers Project web-series that imagines the world if the AIDS crisis never happened; and “Drag Alive Drag Happy Hour.”When: 3 p.m. through 3 a.m.Where: The Eventbrite website. See the full calender, and find out how to sign up, here.James Ijames’ ‘Kill Move Paradise’Now on the Wilma Theater websiteTo support the Justice for George Floyd and Black Lives Matter movements, The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia will stream its 2018 production of James Ijames’ “Kill Move Paradise,” directed by Blanka Zizka and featuring members of the Wilma HotHouse Company. The play — a New York Times Critic’s Pick and a winner of the Whiting Award and the Kesselring Prize — is inspired by the fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by a Cleveland police officer in 2014. To stream the production, audience members will be asked to make a contribution of any size to Black Lives Matter Philly. All proceeds will benefit that chapter.When: Now through June 21Where: The Wilma Theater website. Make a contribution here to get a link to the performance.Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Finishing The Hat’Friday at 3 p.m. on FacebookAs part of a celebration of Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday, “Poetry in America Live” — a new series from the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in partnership with PBS’s “Poetry in America” series — will focus on his song “Finishing the Hat” from the musical “Sunday in the Park with George.” This live event will include a performance of Sondheim songs and a discussion of the lyrics to this particular song. Elisa New, host of PBS’s “Poetry in America,” will be joined by the Tony Award nominee Melissa Errico, the New Yorker staff writer and author Adam Gopnik and the musical director Tedd Firth.When: 3 p.m.Where: The Sheen Center website, as well as its Facebook and YouTube channels.A Star-Studded Pride SummitSaturday at 12:30 p.m. on the Billboard websiteBillboard and The Hollywood Reporter are holding their second annual Pride Summit virtually to celebrate the influence of the L.G.B.T.Q. community across music, media and entertainment. Participating stars including Billy Porter, Lena Waithe, Carson Kressley, Cyndi Lauper, Erika Jayne, Hayley Kiyoko, Indigo Girls, Mary Lambert, Noah Cyrus, Todrick Hall, Wilson Cruz, Jennifer Beals, Katherine Moennig and Leisha Hailey. The daylong event will feature discussions about being out in entertainment and the importance of representation in music, television, film and more — as well as a virtual Pride Prom, with performances, an interactive D.J. set and a drag contest.When: 12:30 p.m.Where: The Billboard Events website.‘We Are Here: A Celebration of Resilience, Resistance and Hope’Sunday at 2 p.m. on the ‘We Are Here’ website“We Are Here: A Celebration of Resilience, Resistance and Hope,” a special concert event — presented by a network of more than 100 organizations across the world including the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene and Sing for Hope — will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the 77th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Numerous actors, musicians and civic leaders will participate, including Whoopi Goldberg, Renée Fleming, Billy Joel, Lang Lang, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Joyce DiDonato, Mayim Bialik and many others. The program will also feature the world premiere of a new work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Corigliano based on a text by Kitty O’Meara, to be performed by Fleming.When: 2 p.m.Where: The “We Are Here” websiteNorman Lear, Rita Moreno and RuPaulSunday at 7 p.m. on 92Y OnlineThe E.G.O.T. winner Rita Moreno and the legendary producer Norman Lear will sit down (virtually) with the Emmy Award winner RuPaul for a conversation about “One Day at a Time” and its influence on the entertainment culture — from Lear’s original vision for the sitcom’s 1970s version to its current incarnation. They’ll also discuss their shared interest in changing the status quo and the different ways each has worked to expand the margins of mainstream television. Tickets are $25.When: 7 p.m.Where: 92Y Online.The Wiggles From the Sydney Opera HouseSunday at 2 a.m. on the Sydney Opera House websiteThe Australian children’s band the Wiggles are making their Sydney Opera House debut in a new performance that will be streamed as part of the opera house’s digital season, “From Our House to Yours.” This will be the Wiggles first show on a stage since their national tour was postponed. They will perform their new single “Social Distancing,” which teaches kids how to keep safe and stay connected with friends during isolation.When: 2 a.m., and the performance will remain available on-demand globally until September 30.Where: The Sydney Opera House website.‘Criminal Queerness Festival’Sunday through June 29 on Zoom or FacebookThe National Queer Theater and Dixon Place, in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and NYC Pride, are hosting the second annual “Criminal Queerness Festival” (of course, this year’s showcase is virtual). Through online performances, conversations and master classes, the “Criminal Queerness Festival” brings together queer and transgender artists from countries that criminalize or censor L.G.B.T.Q. communities. Find the calendar of events here.When: Sunday through June 29.Where: Most events will stream via Zoom or Facebook Live.Anna Deavere Smith on Confronting HateMonday at 7 p.m. on 92Y OnlineThe playwright, actor and professor Anna Deavere Smith is joining the 92nd Street Y’s “Confronting Hate” programming for a discussion that coincides with two of her most renown works becoming available: “Twilight: Los Angeles,” the filmed version of her one-woman play on the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the beating of Rodney King, which will air on PBS’s “Great Performances” anthology series; and “Notes from the Field,” a 2018 film based on her play of the same name that explores racial inequality in the justice system, which is available on HBO’s online platforms.When: 7 p.m.Where: 92Y Online.‘World’s Largest Lesson Live’ PremieresTuesday at 11 a.m. on YouTubeThe actors Millie Bobby Brown and Sofia Carson will join Amina Mohammed, the United Nations deputy secretary-general, and Henrietta Fore, the executive director of UNICEF, in the debut episode of “World’s Largest Lesson Live.” The 30-minute educational show puts experts and young people in conversation to reflect on the past few months and to encourage young people to reimagine the world post-Covid-19. Savannah Sellers, an NBC News and MSNBC anchor, will host.When: 11 a.m., and the episode will be available afterward on the World’s Largest Lesson website and YouTube’s Learn at Home website.Where: The Unicef YouTube channel.Lucy Dacus, for the Royal Albert HallWednesday at 3:30 p.m. on the Royal Albert Hall websiteThe indie-rock singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus will deliver an exclusive set from her home as part of the Royal Albert Hall’s “Royal Albert Home” sessions. Dacus’s sophomore album “Historian,” was called “emotionally raw and intimate” by Joe Coscarelli, a New York Times culture reporter, in 2018. At the time, she described the album as a song cycle about “living through loss and the inevitable darkness of life, and doing so hopefully and joyfully.”When: 3:30 p.m.Where: The Royal Albert Hall website.Mariel Wamsley contributed research. More

When HBO Max went live last month, one of the streaming service’s selling points was its TCM-branded channel of Hollywood classics, including “Citizen Kane,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Casablanca” — and “Gone With the Wind,” the Oscar-winning 1939 adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel, and, according to the American Film Institute, the sixth-greatest American movie of all time.But on Monday — amid intense reflections on depictions of race and policing in popular culture after protests about police brutality — the filmmaker John Ridley wrote an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times pleading with HBO Max to remove “Gone With the Wind” from its streaming library. “It is a film that glorifies the antebellum south,” wrote Ridley, who won an Oscar for the “12 Years a Slave” screenplay. “It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color.”On Tuesday night, the service temporarily pulled the film from its catalog, citing the need for “an explanation and a denouncement” of the movie’s depictions of race relations — presumably something similar to the “outdated cultural depictions” disclaimer offered on some titles on Disney Plus.In fact, “Gone With the Wind” is no stranger to controversy. Here’s a quick explainer.I’ve never seen the movie. What’s the story?As with Mitchell’s best-selling novel, “Gone With the Wind” is set on a Georgia plantation during and after the Civil War. The protagonist is Scarlett O’Hara (Viven Leigh), headstrong daughter of the plantation owner, and the primary focus of the narrative is her romantic exploits. But a fair amount of the film’s leisurely 221-minute running time is spent on the struggle to keep the plantation afloat, and on Scarlett’s relationships with the family’s slaves, including Prissy (Butterfly McQueen), Pork (Oscar Polk) and Mammy (Hattie McDaniel, who won an Oscar for her performance — the first African-American so honored.)What do critics object to?As Ridley notes, the primary point of contention is the film’s romanticizing of the antebellum South, and its whitewashing of the horrors of slavery. The film presents the region’s pre-Civil War era as a utopia of tranquil living, and the Northern forces as interlopers, trying to disrupt that way of life. The servant characters are written and played as docile and content, more dedicated to their white masters than to the struggle of their fellow enslaved people (and uninterested in leaving the plantation after the war). And, much like D.W. Griffith’s horrifying hit “The Birth of a Nation,” the film casts the freed slaves of the Reconstruction era as morally dangerous and politically naïve.How was it received when it was released?Most critics joined in a chorus of praise, and moviegoers flocked to theaters. It remains the top-grossing film of all time, when adjusted for ticket price inflation. The academy was also impressed, giving it 10 Oscars, including best picture, best actress, best director (Victor Fleming) and, of course, McDaniel’s statuette.So nobody objected in 1939?Right-leaning pundits have already branded HBO Max’s removal as yet another example of contemporary “woke”-ism run amok, but “Gone With the Wind” has been the object of controversy since its inception. As detailed by Leonard J. Leff in The Atlantic, several groups sent letters to the producer, David O. Selznick, while the film was in preproduction, flagging their concerns with Mitchell’s novel, including its frequent use of racist slurs and characterization of the Ku Klux Klan as a “tragic necessity.” The Los Angeles Sentinel called for a boycott of “every other Selznick picture, present and future.”Under that pressure, Selznick and his screenwriter, Sidney Howard, ultimately softened some of those elements, and agreed to the N.A.A.C.P.’s suggestion of hiring a technical adviser “to watch the entire treatment of the Negroes.” In fact, he hired two — both of them white.When the film was released, the dramatist Carlton Moss wrote in The Daily Worker that the film “offered up a motley collection of flat black characters that insulted the black audience,” singling out McDaniel’s Mammy as “especially loathsome.” The Chicago Defender put an even finer point on it, calling the film “a weapon of terror against black America.”What’s more, according to Leff, demonstrations and protests were held at theaters in several major markets, including Washington, D.C., Chicago and Brooklyn. To some extent, the protests have never stopped; despite the film’s canonization as an American classic, prominent voices from Malcolm X to Spike Lee to Ridley have spoken out through the decades about its troubling themes, characterizations and imagery. And with this most recent flap, it’s become clear that concerns over the film’s representation and context aren’t going away anytime soon. More

Spike Lee’s career can be described as a lover’s quarrel with American movies — and with America, too. As he has demonstrated his mastery of established genres (the biopic, the musical, the cop movie, the combat picture, and so on), he has also reinvented them, pointing out blind spots and filling in gaps. His critique of Hollywood’s long history of ignoring and distorting black lives has altered the way we look at movies. His attempts to expand the frame and correct the record have changed the course of the cultural mainstream.I’m tempted to say that with “Da 5 Bloods,” which debuts on Netflix on Friday, Lee has done it again. But when has he ever repeated himself? This long, anguished, funny, violent excursion into a hidden chamber of the nation’s heart of darkness isn’t like anything else, even if it may put you in mind of a lot of other things. In its anger, its humor and its exuberance — in the emotional richness of the central performances and of Terence Blanchard’s score — this is unmistakably a Spike Lee Joint. It’s also an argument with and through the history of film.[embedded content]The story, about the lethal consequences of a search for buried gold, is struck from the template of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” A journey upriver from Ho Chi Minh City into the Vietnamese interior recalls “Apocalypse Now,” which the characters have all seen. One of them is also a big “Rambo” fan.And even as it takes up unfinished real-world business at home and in Vietnam, “Da 5 Bloods” wrestles with some of the defining myths and motifs of American cinema. It’s a western, concerned with greed, honor, loyalty and revenge. It’s a bittersweet comedy involving a group of male friends looking back and growing old. It’s a platoon picture about a dangerous mission, a father-son melodrama, an adventure story, a caper and a political provocation.There’s more. There’s a lot. Double crosses, red herrings, dead certainties and live land mines. Furious debates about ends and means, money and morality, capitalism and imperialism. Hawaiian-print shirts, tropical drinks, OxyContin bottles and assault weapons. It doesn’t always hold together, but it never lets go.As prologue to the main narrative, there is a churning, chronologically disordered montage of images from the ’60s and ’70s — news clips and photographs that illustrate the fateful convergence of military escalation in Southeast Asia and racial conflict in the United States. Some of the faces and voices are familiar, and the lesson is clear.From every angle, the situation was a mess, a quagmire. For black soldiers like the five in the movie’s title, it was especially agonizing. They were asked to kill and die in a morally dubious undertaking in the service of a country that refused to treat them as full citizens. North Vietnamese propagandists (like Hanoi Hannah, played by Veronica Ngo) didn’t hesitate to point this out.When we touch down in the present, we are in a Ho Chi Minh City hotel where the four surviving bloods — Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), Eddie (Norm Lewis), Otis (Clarke Peters) and Paul (Delroy Lindo) — have gathered for what looks like an old-timers’ reunion tour. Part of the Big Red One (the Army’s First Infantry Division), the men have come to look for the remains of their squad leader, Stormin’ Norman, who was killed in a firefight.A deep thinker and a shrewd tactician, Norman has taken on almost mythical grandeur in his comrades’ memories. They refer to him as “our Malcolm and our Martin.” When the borders of the frame narrow and the color balance shifts to signify that we are back in the war, Norman is played by Chadwick Boseman, a casting choice that underlines the heroism of the character, who is stamped with the likeness of Jackie Robinson and T’Challa.The bloods believe that somewhere in country, along with Norman’s bones, lies a strongbox full of gold bars, the property of the U.S. government until Norman and his squad claimed them, either as the spoils of war or as reparations.The four veterans have different ideas about what should be done with the loot if they manage to recover it, and they aren’t the only interested parties. Tien (Le Y Lan), Otis’s former lover, is part of the scheme, in association with an unsavory Frenchman in a white linen suit (Jean Reno). Paul’s semi-estranged son, David (Jonathan Majors), joins the expedition, which crosses paths with a trio of international NGO workers (Mélanie Thierry, Paul Walter Hauser and Jasper Paakkonen). There’s also Vinh (Johnny Tri Nguyen), the group’s Vietnamese guide, who reminds the visiting Americans that wars never really end.The truth of this observation is borne out in various ways, some of them bluntly literal. Lee, who wrote the script with Danny Bilson, Paul DeMeo and Kevin Willmott, doesn’t escape from the exoticism that has characterized most American movies about Vietnam, and he doesn’t pursue the connections between black-power politics and international anti-imperialism as far as he might have.But his strength as a political filmmaker has always resided in his ability to bring contradictions to chaotic life rather than to resolve them in any ideologically coherent proposition. This is the opposite of a shortcoming. It seems safe to say that America itself has never been an ideologically coherent proposition, and its greatest artists embrace havoc as a kind of birthright, producing not analyses of chaos but indelible embodiments of it.Which brings me to Lindo. “Da 5 Bloods” is full of wonderful performances, and the warm, profane masculine banter among the bloods is a response to and a relief from the horror they have shared and still face. They all live with pride and regret, scarred in large and small ways by the trauma they endured as young men. Instead of using digital de-aging or look-alike casting, Lee places Whitlock, Lindo, Peters and Lewis alongside Boseman in the flashback scenes, which creates a sense of the uncanny immediacy of memory. The living project their present selves back into the past, while the dead never grow old.To describe Paul as haunted would be less an understatement than a category mistake. He is a colossal, terrifying presence — an archetype in the mold of Natty Bumppo, Captain Ahab, Bigger Thomas and Rambo himself. Lindo’s performance, though, is achingly specific, rigorously human scaled.The storm of rage, guilt, resentment and self-pity that surges through Paul is traced to various sources, small tragedies that illuminate larger catastrophes. When they first meet up in Ho Chi Minh City, shaking hands and busting chops, the other guys give Paul grief for his red MAGA baseball cap. (The hat is almost a character in its own right.) “That’s right, I voted for him,” Paul declares.Everyone knows what Spike Lee thinks of the current president, but everyone should also remember that Lee often shows an almost affectionate interest in characters whose views he finds abhorrent. (It’s a long list that encompasses John Turturro’s Pino in “Do the Right Thing” and the snarling white supremacist played by Paakkonen in “BlacKkKlansman.”) And Lee doesn’t treat Paul as a misguided reactionary. His pain is the motor and the moral of the story. He isn’t the hero of the movie. He’s the reason to see it.Da 5 BloodsRated R. Blood. Running time: 2 hours 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More