Spike Lee’s hard lesson on the musical industry
“Can You Handle The Lovers, Can You Handle The Mensi?” (can you manage lovers, can you manage memes?) Asks with a fatally serious expression Denzel Washington to Ice Spice in what seems to be the renovation of “A star was born” in the world of African American music. She nods, convinced, after showing her singing skills, just before singing on the credits a rap cover of “Prisencolinensininciusol”By Adriano Celentano. We would be in the middle of a cinematographic-musical cliché if it was not that this is the point of arrival, not the departure of “Highest 2 Lowest”, the new Spike Lee film presented in these hours at the Cannes Film Festival. A film that, even with an amused and never too busy approach, It moves critical inapposable to the world of music today in which “attention is the most precious currency”. That of the media, social, instagram accounts, of course.
Despite luxurious appearances, it is not an easy period for the old king of the sector, “the best ear of the system” David King (Denzel Washington). He is trying to keep his Stackin ‘Hits Record’s record label afloat after missing the artist of the moment. He lives in a pentahouse apartment in a sparkling New York skyscraper, surrounded by luxury and his works by Basquiat. At work he swims surrounded by Sharks who want to acquire his label, to dilute Afro -American history, Squeeze the artists until they pull out the last dollar. Spike Lee’s genius is all in how it takes the excellent script by Alan Fox that rewrites An old masterpiece by Akira Kurosawa “Anatomy of a kidnapping” (1963) and transforms it into “Highest 2 Lowest”, a film that has its most successful and memorable moments in the original passages resulting from his pen, his acumen. The film opens like a slightly more realistic “Empire”. Remember the series that told the events of one in a soap key A very rich African American family in the rap music business?
Lee starts from the same start, beatenly crogified in the African American cultural universe, in his boundless love for New York (“Boston down!”). I almost bring out his moment West Side Story when Intesse A chase in the streets of Brooklynamong the Puerto Rooms who dance with great transport on the notes of the Eddie Palmieri’s big sauce orchestra While the fans of the Yankees who go to the stadium. All blessedly unaware that King has just lost a backpack containing $ 17.5 million on the subway necessary to pay the redemption for the liberation of the son of his right arm, kidnapped in place of his.
The part that derives most directly from Kurosawa and the detective intrigue linked to the kidnapping are managed so listlessly on a narrative level that they undermine the possibility of the film to express its enormous potential. It is a conscious choice, a desire to be acute and pungent without losing lightness. Especially on the musical side, where Spike Lee does not send them to tell anyone. Not even to its protagonist, played by a stainless, ironic Denzel Washington. A king mida of African American music to which he comes rightly reproached for having moved away from the discovery of the artists, From listening to avant -garde music, to immerse yourself in a way made of bags and streams on Spotify, in which you look at the artist and open his Instagram profile to see how many followers he has.
A world in which music becomes a means of obtaining the end: money, because It is Music Business, on the accent on this last word. King himself during the film runs into social fame and this helps and together he complicates his attempt to preserve the purity of his record label, his mission to support young people’s talented African Americans in a world that It begins to think that the AI is the answer to every question, even in the music field. Lee does not spare even a look at the complexity of that African American community that generates the music that King produces and launches. A musical culture that is united under the indisputable stars of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder, but in reality now deeply divided on an economic level. King in his skyscraper, the rappers looking for fame in their underground recording studios, in what was once the neighborhood where the protagonist lived, who now on the streets of New York turns only in the Rolls Royce led by his friend and partner.
Spike Lee’s new film keeps the pulse of today’s music so well that rap also infects the cast, Where we find two new levers that David himself may have launched. In addition to the aforementioned Ice Spice among the supporting actors we find A $ ap Rocky, Which is seriously attempting his recitative career (he had impressed and positively in February at the Berlinal in the film “If I Had Legs I’m Kick You”), which also ends up rapping with Denzel Washington. It is another face of the record world told and supported by Lee: music is no longer enough, because The musician or singer -songwriter today must be an all -round talentdo many things beyond music in and of themselves, to be able to afford the luxury of continuing to play, sing, perform.
What is most striking – perhaps the most revealing passage of the film – is when the very young son of the protagonist says “It seems to be in 2004”, identifying in the era immediately preceding the advent of Spotify The last great flammate for rap and hip-hop launched by labels outside the court of the great majors, With the will and patience of exhausting raw talents. With so much nostalgia for the previous era to that in which we live, in which the numbers and media attention from the result of the success achieved become a prerequisite to be produced. The music of the early 2000s was selected by men like King David, who defines himself A dispenser of occasions, “Chance Giver”. One who goes for seventy years but in a world “in which all rappers play equal” immediately recognizes a voice heard a couple of times by phone.
“Highest 2 Lowest” does not fully exploit the potential of his story because Spike Lee chooses more than anything else to have fun, operating this curious overturning that He transforms one of Kurosawa’s most dramatic works into a genuinely fun film. The cynical and disillusioned gaze on the social gap that leads people very distant to confront each other with equally desperate choices, however, everything is still there. The fact that Lee of all possible contexts has chosen precisely that of the musical industry as a setting for this story (and reason) leaves a particularly bitter taste in the mouth.
“Highest 2 Lowest” was presented at the Cannes 2025 Festival. It will soon land on Apple TV+.
