Do The Right Thing

I am reviewing Spike Lee's films; I consider "Do The Right Thing" to be a unique masterpiece that will endure forever. I like his other films, but none of them makes me feel as if I were sitting next to Socrates and Aristotle, watching a Greek tragedy by Aeschylus (not Euripides!), or being in the company of great visions being recounted by heavenly griots from some mysterious clime of genius.

A scene with Ossie Davis and Spike Lee, Ossie sitting on the stoop of a house when Mookie (Spike Lee) walks by delivering a pizza, Ossie is "The Mayor" and he refers to Mookie as "Doctor".

Mayor:  Doctor! Come here, this is the Mayor talking.
Mookie:  Ah right, ah right. What is it?
Mayor:  Doctor... always do the right thing.
Mookie:  That's it?
Mayor:  That's it.
Mookie:  I got it. I'm gone.

Part of the genius is in the perception that we almost never do "the right thing". We do the expedient thing, the profitable thing, the thing we think we should do, the thing we think celebrities would do, the thing that people with big smile on the cover of their books tell us to do, the thing we ideologically believe we should do...

...but how often do we do the right thing?

I think part of the enormous effect this film has is the sudden awareness that our lives are based on "almost" not "is"; we never do the right thing until everything explodes into our faces.