You can't stand it, you can't stand it
You can't stand the heat
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Has there ever been a filmmaker who Just Knows What He’s Doing more than Steven Soderbergh? Every time I watch one of the prolific director’s movies, whether I love it or find myself ambivalent—I don’t think I’ve ever truly disliked one—I always come away thinking the same thing: this guy Just Knows What He’s Doing. Technical precision, lightness of touch, mastery of tone, economic storytelling, sly humor, you name it. The latest example of Soderbergh Just Knowing What He’s Doing is this week’s quick rec: the slick, zippy thriller Kimi, a pandemic-era riff on Hitchcock’s Rear Window, which dropped straight onto HBO Max with relatively little fanfare earlier this year.
Kimi stars Zoe Kravitz as Angela, a severely agoraphobic tech support worker for an Alexa-like product (the “Kimi” of the title). Things start to go pretty wrong for Angela pretty quickly, and her resourcefulness is tested in a series of increasingly gripping set pieces. I knew nothing about Kimi going in, and I appreciated that, so I’ll reveal no more, except to say that I think the film contains one of the very best sequences of Soderbergh’s entire career, and that it also has the decency to get in and out in 89 minutes flat.
It’s very hot, and when it’s very hot, I tend to think of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing (1989), one of the most successful examples of a movie effectively conveying the sensation of extreme heat through film language: those insane reds and oranges! Those sweaty, dutch-angled close-ups! The fluorescent costumes! Lee’s collaborators on Do The Right Thing, including cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, production designer Wynn Thomas, and costume designer Ruth E. Carter (later an Academy Award-winner for Black Panther), were all on top of their game here.
One of my favorite sequences in Do The Right Thing is a montage, exactly 25 minutes in, set to the song “Can’t Stand It” by the Birmingham reggae band Steel Pulse. A crashing cymbal sounds, the band kicks in, and, as the song’s skittering drums, rising horns, booming bass, and lilting vocals provide a bouncy aural bed, we’re inside a bodega, zooming onto the front page of the New York Times, which sounds a heatwave warning. The camera tracks sinuously across a series of increasingly alarmist yet accurate headlines (“PHEW!”, exclaims the New York Post, simply), and then we cut to various members of the Bed-Stuy community doing their best to keep cool: dunking heads into ice water, taking cold showers, cracking open beers, and cranking open the fire hydrant for an impromptu street shower.
The sounds of Steel Pulse are abruptly curtailed by the arrival of the glowering Radio Raheem (the late Bill Nunn), whose ever-present boombox is blasting out the film’s de facto theme tune: Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power”. The reveling crowd know Radio Raheem is not to be messed with, so they part like the red sea, cover the hydrant, and let him pass. The next person to enter the scene, a brash Italian American guy (Frank Vincent) in a fancy convertible, is not so fortunate.
“Can’t Stand It” is a poppy reggae gem, and I’ve always got a kick out of this very distinct Jamaican-British sound scoring a pivotal moment in such a quintessentially American film. I especially enjoy the slightly nonsensical line “Refrigerator has run out of ice” (why was there ice in the refrigerator?), and its follow up backing vocal echo of “Oice!”, delivered in a distinctly Brummie accent. Spike was clearly a fan of the band, who were then enjoying a breakthrough moment in America, albeit at the expense of some of their earlier devotees, who were alienated by the band’s move away from more politically and socially conscious roots reggae in favor of a slicker style. (For some vintage roots-era Steel Pulse, check out the opening moments of the vital and searing 1978 documentary Blacks Britannica, where the band delivers a roaring rendition of their song “Handsworth Revolution”.)
As it happens, as I discovered in the writing of this letter, Spike Lee directed, and briefly appears in [see below], the video for Steel Pulse’s single “Reaching Out”, an even jauntier slice of pop reggae. It’s a lot of fun, and you can watch it here! Until next week…
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