Close-Up Blog-a-thon: The Bleek Future

It is fitting that she sings a blues number, for Bleek Gilliam has had plenty of reasons to have the blues.

Mo' Better Blues
Photo: Universal Pictures

When Mo’ Better Blues’s jazzman hero, Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington), walks into the jazz club where his former bandmate Shadow Henderson (Wesley Snipes) is showcasing his new group, he is met literally and figuratively by director Spike Lee: Literally in that Lee shares the frame as Bleek’s compulsive gambler/former manager Giant; figuratively in that Lee’s camera brings him into focus over Clarke Betancourt’s shoulder after she sings the opening lines of W.C. Handy’s “Harlem Blues.”

“You can never tell what’s in a man’s mind
And if he’s from Harlem, there’s no use of even trying.”

Except for one brief shot of Giant beckoning for him to move toward the stage, Bleek is absent from the scene until he is afforded his close-up. During their love affair, Clarke (Cynda Williams) repeatedly expressed her desire to sing with Bleek’s band, only to be dismissed by Bleek as “not ready.” Since we never hear her sing until this moment, her ample talent comes as a revelation.


Beforehand, Clarke Betancourt existed in this predominantly male universe solely as a pretty, vapid receptacle for Bleek and Shadow’s lust.


But when she finally sings, she levels the playing field, giving her a female dignity rarely seen in a Spike Lee joint.


The male musicians in Mo’ Better Blues speak their emotions through the God-given mastery of their man made instruments, pieces of metal that reveal that which they cannot express in words. Clarke’s emotions flow directly from the source, unimpeded and untranslated by any man-made instrument. It makes her formerly suppressed feelings purer, almost divine by comparison. She glows in the bluish light that illuminates her.

It is fitting that she sings a blues number, for Bleek Gilliam has had plenty of reasons to have the blues. A year earlier, Bleek’s ego and womanizing alienated him from his band and the two women who vied for his affection, and Giant’s debts led Bleek to be brutally silenced by his own conversation piece.

The trumpet is an intimate instrument for its owner. The saxophone seduces the listener, but a trumpet player orally seduces his horn. Learning to play the trumpet is like kissing a doorknob, but like any kiss, once you get good at it, it’s a happy and sensual experience. Bleek’s blues reach their nadir when criminal Samuel L. Jackson uses the seduced to destroy the seducer. With his trumpet-smashed lips, the talkative Bleek has gone mute, rendering him useless to do the thing he loved most–telling the world how great he thinks he is.

W.C. Handy played Bleek’s instrument, and the irony of Clarke singing a trumpeter’s blues song does not go unnoticed. When she sings “since my sweetie left me Harlem, well it ain’t the same old place,” she might be channeling Bleek’s feelings about his horn. Yet, Lee withholds any reaction shot of Bleek until near the end of the song. When Lee gives us Bleek, Washington plays the close-up as a meditation on loss. There’s no need to try to read this Harlem man’s mind; his eyes tell us he realizes the depth of his mistakes.


When Clarke finally acknowledges Bleek’s presence, it is done in an equally knowing close-up. “I told you so,” she seems to say with her smile.


Blues may not be Spike Lee’s masterpiece, but it is cinematographer Ernest Dickerson’s. Despite Blues’ flaws, most of which are dialogue-related, this is a beautiful piece of cinema. In Do The Right Thing, Dickerson made the viewer feel as hot as the tortured Bed-Stuy residents felt on the hottest day of the year. In Mo’ Better Blues, he gives you life through a jazzman’s eyes.

He bathes the opening credits sequence’s trumpet in a sumptuous, shiny metallic blue light–one can almost feel the coolness of the instrument against the skin.

He shoots sunny exteriors with such brightness they hurt the eyes, giving a vampiric sense of what morning must be like for a night owl. (There’s a shot of the sun’s rays coming through Bleek’s window that is nothing short of astonishing; this is to light what Gordon Willis is to darkness.)


Red is also a dominant color of Dickerson’s work here, and it’s always synonymous with the dangers of sin–the bright red light that bursts forth from the open door of the jazz club as Lee is dragged out to be beaten by Jackson, the same red dress that both of Bleek’s women wear to a meeting at which they were not supposed to simultaneously appear–and he treats those cool blues and hot reds like the proverbial angel and devil on one’s shoulders.


It’s a brightly colored noir aesthetic. The streets shimmer with wetness in the alley where Bleek’s life changes, and Dickerson is careful to capture the glint of light reflecting against the trumpet that smashes Bleek’s face in–it glows as if touched by King Midas himself.


Like the musician’s instruments and Clarke’s voice, Dickerson expresses what he wants us to feel through his cinematic palette. One wishes Lee had trusted these images more, instead of bogging them down with clunky dialogue. By setting Bleek’s moment of revelation to a song, Lee was able to resist writing any exposition. He let his instrument speak for itself, crafting one of the best pieces of visual storytelling in his career.

Editor’s Note: This is a contribution to the Close-Up Blog-a-thon.

This article was originally published on The House Next Door.

Odie Henderson

Odie Henderson's work has also appeared in The Village Voice, Vulture, Cineaste Magazine, MovieMezzanine, Salon, and RogerEbert.com.

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