'Do the Right Thing' deserved the best picture Oscar 25 years ago

Rosie Perez and Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing

Do the Right Thing is one of my favorite films of all time.

It might be the best film I've ever seen on the subject of race.

And it's quite possibly the best thing Spike Lee has ever made (although his 1992 biopic Malcolm X gives it a run for it's money).

It came out 25 years ago this week and was inexplicably ignored by the Academy Awards, which chose to honor the forgettable (but feel good) Driving Miss Daisy instead.

All these years later, the movie has lost none of its power and insight. If anything it's both a sad reminder of how far Lee has fallen since his film-making heyday and how under-appreciated this movie was then and now.

It was only Lee's third major motion picture and he was only 32 years old when it came out (my age now). His accomplishment is staggering. The movie is teeming with life. From the vibrant cinematography (from frequent Lee collaborator Ernest Dickerson) to the pulse pounding music (supplied by Public Enemy and others) to warm and compelling performances from a diverse cast that includes Ossie Davis, John Turturro and the late Ruby Dee -- this movie has so much to enjoy and also a lot of content to provoke.

The action takes place on a steamy summer day in the predominately black Brooklyn neighborhood in Bed-Stuy. Tensions are bubbling between black and white, as well as with Latinos and Asians in the community -- but not in a trite, overblown Crash sort of way. The interactions are subtle and authentic yet brimming with wit and insight.

Bill Nunn in Do the Right Thing

I'll give you one example -- one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever. Lee's character (a pizza man named Mookie) frequently butts heads with his bigoted co-worker Pino (an excellent Turturro). Eventually Mookie pulls Pino aside and quizzes him about who his favorite pop culture icons are. They turn out to be all black -- legends of the 1980s: Eddie Murphy, Magic Johnson and Prince. Mookie earnestly asks him how he can throw the n-word and other racial insults around and yet revere black celebrities. Pino inarticulately tries to explain that those blacks are somehow "more than black."

This profound conversation -- which speaks to the heart of how race prejudice is deeply entwined with class -- leads to a surreal and infamous montage of different ethnic and social minorities (Jews, Koreans, Latinos, etc.) rattling off the most hateful (but also undeniably amusing) stereotypes about other cultures directly to the camera. The impact is startling and refreshing.

Lee was so in command of the cinematic form at this time. Even his missteps, like Mo' Better Blues, were still fascinating and incredibly watchable. Sometime after Bamboozled (2000) he fell off and the only glimmer of hope came in 2006 when he scored his biggest commercial success ever with the fun, fleet-footed heist film Inside Man and triumphed with his breathtaking documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, When the Levees Broke.

Since then, Lee seems content to revel in his angry man persona and make films that are alienating at best. Miracle at St. Anna was beautiful looking but a narrative mess and his low budget Red Hook Summer was offensively bad and, at times, difficult to watch. His Oldboy remake looked promising but it was oddly under-promoted and failed horribly at the box office. As Lee approaches 60 he risks irrelevance which is a tragedy because Hollywood needs more voices like his.

Regardless of what you may think of him and some of his films (he has been heavily criticized for his portrayals of women, for instance) he could never be accused of making mindless entertainment. In fact he has dared to confront the issue of race in ways that are both rare and emotionally satisfying.

When Hollywood attempts to raise the racial question they usually air on the side of life affirming liberal fantasies like The Blind Side, but a film like Do the Right Thing, with its violent, confrontational climax, isn't interested in making people pat themselves on the back.

It's sad frankly, that we were able to get this kind of thought-provoking entertainment back in 1989 and now we can only look to TV shows like The Wire to get some semblance of realism. Spike Lee may have lost his way but I will always cherish his work in his prime.