‘NYC Epicenters: 9/11→2021½’: Spike Lee Pays Tribute To New York Resilience In Poignant HBO Doc Series [Review]

Nobody loves New York like filmmaker Spike Lee, obviously. We know this because of his many, many films so intrinsically tethered to New York City, Da People’s Republic of Brooklyn, and the five boroughs, his many photo ops courtside at home team NBA games, and his larger than life presence in Fort Greene (arguably kind of quiet, actually, but his vibrant 40 Acres & A Mule HQ is hard to miss). We also know that because Lee has to ask seemingly every one of the over 200 interview subjects of his new four-part doc series, “NYC Epicenters: 9/11→2021½,” about their allegiance to the Knicks or the Yankees and whether or not someone is a Red Sox fan (the series begins airing this weekend on HBO, Sunday, August 22, and then ends, fittingly enough, with the final episode on September 11, 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the fateful day). Given the heavy subject matter, the COVID-19 pandemic, all the people we lost, the justifiably angry Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020, 9/11, its aftermath, but also just overarching New York resilience, the sports asides are one part colorful, one part distracting, and one part undisciplined, especially given all the trauma and tragedy endured lately. On the other hand, maybe a little levity is needed, an ice breaker before people bare their souls and give testimonials about who they lost and how they suffered. This sometimes incompatible collage of tones and flavors make up for some, but not all, of Lee’s latest endeavor.

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Fortunately, for all its shenanigans (as Lee would like to say), ‘NYC Epicenters’ is ultimately deeply tied to the filmmaker’s most soulful and humanist films, namely “Do The Right Thing” (police brutality and racism in NYC), “The 25^th Hour” (the angry, sad, heartbroken aftermath of 9/11), his two monumentally powerful Katrina docs (“When The Levees Broke” and “If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise”) and his first Oscar-nominated doc “4 Little Girls.” All of this is to say, episode one of the series—mostly centered on how New York endured and suffered through the flash pot of the pandemic during the March/April outbreak— is a little uneven, almost exasperatingly so. But it’s an epic and sprawling chronicle with various modes.

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At first, the series showcases a lot of humor, style, and flash mixed in with solemn, painful reminders of how we got to the other side of the pandemic (so far, anyhow–hi, Delta Variant) that feels a little incongruous, potentially even disrespectful to some viewers (to quote Bo Burnham’s comedic pandemic quandary, “should we be joking at a time like this?”). I’d even personally go as far as to say that in episode one, Sam Pollard—who edited and produced the Katrina docs and “4 Little Girls,” and co-received all the various Emmy, Peabody, and Oscar accolades that came with each—his steady, seemingly more controlled and methodical presence is sorely missed in that potent, but frustrating opening.

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Thankfully, Lee gets most of his ya yas out in episode one—chapter one and two—and ‘NYC Epicenters’ soon becomes what you would hope: a tour de force mosaic portrait of all the pain that New York has sustained since the pandemic began in February 2020, and all the anger that soon spilled over when the social injustices and inequities in America came into sharp focus. Also, of course, underlying it all, the notion of perseverance that seems to define New York even as history has shown it to be a “soft target” to American adversaries and haters since its inception.

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Lee and many of his talking head interviewees seem to all come to a similar conclusion. Once the pandemic hit, sports stopped, movies went away, and pop culture ground to a halt; there was no distraction, no escape, and no looking away. America was in full, plain view for the first time in decades, and we had to reckon with what we wrought.  “A lot of us were in the hamster wheel, doing the best we could,” CNN’s Van Jones says. “Covid stopped [that], and a lot of people fell out and looked around and didn’t like what we saw in America, didn’t like the racism, the authoritarianism, the lies, the conspiracies, didn’t like ourselves.” It’s an observation that’s hard to disagree with, given how the U.S. seemingly imploded a few short months after COVID hit.

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Dubbed a documentary essay, Lee scrawls and scribbles in the margins with asides, discursive moments, and yes, humor. And while that technique, sometimes a little messy, has some objectionable moments early on, once it all settles into a rhythm, it becomes highly compelling television. Brimming with various interviews with New Yorkers, famous or otherwise— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, John Turturro, Rosie Perez, Jon Stewart, Steve Buscemi, fellow Fort Green resident Jeffrey Wright—and so many more, Lee’s doc arguably doesn’t need eight hours to tell itself, but in giving room for people to tell their stories—first responders, nursing staff, BLM activists, scientists, health care workers, politicians and more—he creates a vibrant and super entertaining tapestry of New York voices speaking to their experiences of the difficult last few years, especially in the toxic era of Trump.

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Speaking of Agent Orange, as Lee loves to call him—dubbed so by his pal Busta Rhymes who makes an appearance explaining how he came upon this Grammy on-stage moment to roast the President—his reign of terror becomes part and parcel with everything America agonized over, from his ineptitude and wanton negligence in his botched handling of the coronavirus to all the animus he stirred up. Lee certainly aims the way Trump gave Americans permission to embrace their worst selves, to indulge in casual, blatant racism, to embolden discriminatory police, and the way his careless words severely damaged black, brown, and Asian communities.

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“The connection of the absurd and the diabolical is something I totally missed,” says John Stewart. “The reason you need an absurd figure is it takes someone without shame to be able to lead a shameful movement.”

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One of the thing’s Lee’s doc is extremely prescient about—especially given his recent resignation—is its treatment of former governor Andrew Cuomo, who is raked over the coals by various figures (especially enemy New York City mayor Bill De Blasio) and lambasted for patting himself on the back with a book about leadership and how he bravely steered New York through the pandemic, while people were still dying and coverups about nursing home COVID deaths were being exposed, alongside his intimidation and threats to those trying to blow the whistle on his administration. For those too fixated on COVID morbidity, Dr. Anthony Fauci updates (who gets his due in a brief interview), Trump’s interminable talent for bullshit, the BLM protests, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, the overall existential anxiety and despair that grew from the 2020 hellscape, and found themselves with little time and energy left to really contend with what the fuck Cuomo was up to, Lee’s doc puts all his skullduggery and bamboozling into great context.

Now disgraced former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani—described at one point as a “melting down, cracked out clown”— isn’t spared his drubbings either. The hilariously incompetent Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco gets its moment, as does the proper notion that Giuliani was always shitty, racist, garbage who got too much mileage from the two weeks he behaved like an adult after 9/11. New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, pillorized during the Trump years for her perceived cozying up to the White House administration for access, comes off exceptionally well too. Whether this is by calculated design to clean up her blemished image or not is up for debate (it seems too sincere to be phony, honestly), she is one of the figures who puts Giuliani’s “he was always trash” notions into perfect context. Her affecting words about the horrid and unspeakably monstrous child separation policies of the Trump administration and the irrevocably monumental damage it caused families, parents, and children, also put a heartbreaking cap on that dreadful chapter in American history.

Lee covers a lot of ground, going back as far as the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center (a prelude to September 11, really) and giving ample time to honor just about any and every New Yorker who lived through 9/11–firefighters, first responders, journalists, photographers and more. ‘NYC Epicenters’ arguably jumps around in time too much, but COVID-19 and the rising death toll is always simmering in the background to anchor the narrative. Whether Lee’s talking about Charlottesville, the Capitol Riots, the rise in Anti-Asian hate, police brutality, or Trump provocations, he’s generally circling back to COVID-19 or post-pandemic life via vaccination context or fears (a good segment about understandable Black community vaccine skepticism— given the ill-treatment of Black people in the health care system— but never once giving into the ideas of justifying anti-vax sentiment.

‘NYC Epicenters’ can be indulgent at times—and I’m not sure who did the font and color treatments on the chyrons that could use a lot of work—but regardless of some flaws, it’s powerful, insightful, and endlessly captivating once it locks into its groove. Lee’s personal essay is also moving, profound, traumatizing, and triggering as you witness the events of the last few difficult years unfold all over again. Not one second of the George Floyd or Eric Garner murder footage isn’t brutalizing; not one moment of seeing Trump’s horrific violent rhetoric and knowing the harm it caused isn’t maddening all over again.

Lee’s best gut-wrenching work, especially the outstanding, often slept-on docs, are often requiems for America; its broken soul, withered spirit, and fractured heart, and there’s no greater collaborator by his side in this endeavor than composer Terence Blanchard. In ‘NYC Epicenters,’ like in so many somber, solemn Lee narratives or documentaries, Blanchard’s lugubrious and patriotic horns cry in despair for how far America has fallen. But their anthemic qualities also rise with the spirit of strength and resolve, and Lee always knows how to ride that musical wave towards something profound. No one pierces through America’s heart quite like Spike Lee does. Yet, his admiration, love, loyalty for his New York home, and hope for humanity is also a soulful paean to keep on keepin’ on persistence and a treasure unparalleled in cinema today.  [A-]