THE AISLE SEAT - "SUMMER OF SAM"
by Mike McGranaghan
The summer of 1977 was one of the most highly-charged in history for the citizens of New York. The Yankees won the World Series. There was a record-breaking heat wave. A brownout caused people to go without power. Punk rock was just beginning to revolutionize music. And, of course, a guy named David Berkowitz was terrorizing the city with his killings. He called himself Son of Sam. His victims were mostly women, and he believed - among other things - that dogs spoke to him, issuing directives to kill.
Spike Lee's newest film, Summer of Sam, revisits that summer. The result is an electrifying movie about a small group of people who are caught in the heightened emotions that ran through the city 22 years ago.
John Leguizamo stars as Vinny, a young man with a sexy wife named Dionna (Mira Sorvino). They spend their nights in the discos, seemingly without a care in the world. At home, it's a different story. Vinny feels he should only have "proper" sex with his wife, so he indulges in various affairs as a way of sating his true sexual urges. Meanwhile, his old buddy Ritchie (Adrian Brody) turns himself from a Bronx punk into a punk rocker (complete with faux British accent). As the events of the summer unfold, the characters' lives become more stressful. Dionna, like many women, starts wearing a blonde wig (it was assumed, incorrectly, that Berkowitz had it in for brunettes). Vinny becomes convinced that the killer is out to get him after he nearly witnesses one of the murders. Ritchie gets caught in the growing paranoia; some of his neighborhood chums come to believe he is the Son of Sam.
Spike Lee's strength as a filmmaker lies in his ability to create a mood and show how that mood intensifies as peoples' actions grow more extreme. Like his masterpiece Do the Right Thing, Summer of Sam starts out slowly, introducing us to the characters and allowing us to understand who they are. Then Lee tightens the screws until the end, at which time things become explosive. But whereas Do the Right Thing was about escalating race relations, this movie is a more psychological examination of how so many big emotions made a lot of people very edgy.
The movie is beautifully filmed and filled with effective moments. Especially dramatic are the recreations of Berkowitz's madness. Lee employs a high-speed shutter on his camera to give the Berkowitz scenes a mind-rattling intensity. I also liked how reporter Jimmy Breslin - whom Berkowitz frequently wrote - appears as himself at the beginning and end (at which point, he calls the killer a "sick f---").
As taut as the Berkowitz material is, it would be a mistake to say that Summer of Sam is a film about him or his killings. It is most definitely not. Instead the emphasis is on the fictional characters who are driven to more and more erratic behaviors because of fear. The movie is a small masterpiece in the way it shows these people coming apart at the seams. Lee has done an impressive job showing the tension and frenzy that gripped New York through the microcosm of these characters. Although not your typical "thriller," the film keeps upping the ante until you become frazzled with nervous energy. That's the point where you realize you are just watching a movie; millions of real people actually felt this.
All the performances are superb, and I liked Lee's stylistic forays into various parts of his subject matter (for instance, a recreation of the punk rock feeling set to the Who song "Baba O'Reilly" is especially effective). Summer of Sam does have its violent moments as it shows David Berkowitz killing people. And it does show his capture and infamous public display upon capture. In the end, though, this movie is more than a docudrama, more than a way of capitalizing off public fascination with a true story. Summer of Sam is a spellbinding account of how fear causes illogical reactions, and how illogical reactions cause impulsive actions which, in turn, are just as dangerous as a serial killer.
(
1/2 out of four)
Return
to the Archive
