Troy Carmichael (Zelda Harris) is a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, or as it is affectionately referred to by those around her, “Crooklyn, New York”, in the early 1970s. A feisty girl wise beyond her years, she has to contend with four brothers who are also experiencing the sensation of growing up in such a tumultuous time, with their family shepherded by the matriarch, Carolyn (Alfre Woodard), a stern but loving schoolteacher, and Woody (Delroy Lindo), a musician conflicted between pursuing his ambitions or providing for his family by following conventions. We watch “Troy the Boy” and her brothers over the course of one summer as they interact with many of the colourful characters that populate their urban block, and yearn to understand the way the world works, long before most children would ever get such an idea. Meanwhile, the Carmichael family has to fight battles none of the children are meant to see, with their parents struggling to make ends meet, and Carolyn finding out that she may not always be there to provide for her children, which only motivates her to give them the best life possible while she’s still around, which turns out to be a lot shorter than most would expect. Yet, every experience that these characters encounter are all important in building them into individuals, and where they eventually learn the most fundamental truth about life: it’s not really about the destination, but the journey that it took to get there, and the lessons learned along the way.

Autobiographical stories are difficult to get right, especially when it comes to making a film because there’s something intimidating about the space between the screen and the audience. Spike Lee understands this implicitly, as evident by Crooklyn, perhaps his most underrated film to date. A sweetly sentimental tale of his upbringing told through the eyes of a precocious young girl growing up in the 1970s in the neighbourhoods of Brooklyn. An endearing comedy that isn’t afraid to go to some grave narrative territory, Crooklyn is the rare kind of film that not only entertains the audience but offers the insights into the human condition that only Lee could do with such rebellious integrity, where he is able to touch on many facets of society’s idiosyncratic nature without ever resorting to overt cliche or excessive, saccharine storytelling. This is a film that clearly hits close to home for the director, who is venturing slightly out of what we had come to expect from him by this point, still situating the film in the familiar neighbourhood of Bed-Stuy, but going deeper into the lives of a family that very closely resemble his own. This all converges into one of Lee’s most exquisite explorations of human nature, a tremendously fun, heartwarming comedy about life and death, family and friends, and the experience of growing up. It’s a visual bildungsroman that can stand alongside all the towering masterpieces of the genre, with its authenticity and heartfulness working towards a truly under-praised masterpiece that sees the director at the very top of his creative career.

Lee has made a set of films that form a loose chronology of life in Brooklyn, with Crooklyn being one of the centrepiece entries into this series. One of the themes he touches on in nearly all of them, but most predominantly in this one, is family. The director has famously included his family in various spheres of his career, whether in collaborating with them on selecting the music used in the film or helping with the writing of specific stories. None of them come close to the family affair that occurred with Crooklyn, which saw Lee working alongside his two siblings in writing this beautiful ode to family. This is a central theme here, and it shows with the elegance approach to representing the daily routine of an ordinary family trying to make ends meet in a social climate where life is much harder for the working-class than it needs to be. Telling the story through the eyes of a character clearly based on Joie Lee (where the surrogate for director himself is relegated to one of the smaller roles), the film focuses on a young girl on the precipice of adolescence, seeing the world around her as a colourful, strange place where she has never quite fit in, but can’t ever imagine escaping from, only because home is not a location, but a feeling, and when surrounded by her family, as dysfunctional as they may appear, there’s nothing to drive her away or make her yearn for a better life. There’s a sweet sentimentality to Crooklyn that Lee has obviously never come close to replicating – it’s the film that may be the director’s most personal, but also the one that sees him delving deeper into the lives of an ordinary family, where bigger issues are momentarily put on hold in the endeavour to portray the inner workings of a group of individuals trying to survive in a time when even just making it through the week is a miracle.

In looking at one family, Lee manages to take on a much broader set of ideas without ever explicitly trying to extend too far from his semi-autobiographical intentions. Crooklyn is the rare Spike Lee joint that doesn’t rely on the narrative as much as it does the atmosphere – even the notoriously laid-back Do the Right Thing converged into pure social horror in the final act. This film is concerned more with creating a mood and replicating a specific moment in the lives of the main characters, drawn from the memories of the screenwriters, who do exceptionally well in making a film that doesn’t need to use the story as a crutch, being just as compelling (if not even more) when it intends to just be a quiet social odyssey more than anything else. The community takes a prominent role in the film – various characters weave through the film, mainly the childhood friends and adversaries of the protagonist, who is delighted by those who keep her company, terrorized by those set on deriding her in the way children sometimes tend to do. The Carmichael family may be central to the film, but is also not something that restricts the filmmakers. Like the previous and subsequent entries into the Brooklyn series, the film tries to present a broad image of the community as a specific time, where its eccentric characters (which may be far more authentic than most would give them credit for) are not confined to the periphery but are equally as important, not because they progress the plot, but rather enrich it. As compelling as the main characters are, it’s the people they encounter that allow this film to flourish. One of Lee’s most underpraised qualities as a filmmaker is giving even the most insignificant role a part to play in the story. In a Spike Lee film, there’s no such thing as a small actor or a small role, but rather a wide array of quirky and endearing individuals that all make up the social mosaic that the director manages to portray so exceptionally well, especially when making something so close to his own experiences.

Moreover, as is relatively expected from this kind of film, Lee puts together a terrific cast. Zelda Harris leads the film in her debut, giving one of the most natural performances from a child actor at the time. Her feisty exterior, coupled with her inner insecurity, helps the character of Troy extend further than just being a purely innocent protagonist, rather constructing her as a complex individual through which the story can be told. The only truly lucid character in the film (certainly something done by design), Troy is the audience surrogate, and the cinematic representative of Joie Lee, who conceived of this story. In bringing the character to life, Harris works wonderfully alongside the rest of the cast, especially the four actors who play her brothers. They may lack depth, and become somewhat homogenous in the process of the film (again, most likely done deliberately, as a lot of this film focuses on Troy being the only girl growing up in a house full of males), but they’re very entertaining, and give this film a lot of comic gravitas, especially when Harris’ more spirited performance means the film sometimes veers towards more serious territory. However, Crooklyn really rests on the performances by the two most notable castmembers – Alfre Woodard, who is one of her generation’s most talented actors, gives a truly powerful performance as the family matriarch, a woman trying to maintain order in a household that is just inherently chaotic. The strength in Woodard’s performance comes in how, at the outset, she’s a relatively unpleasant figure, seeming to be incapable of any kindness, which is quickly proven incorrect when we learn that beneath her strict interior, there’s a tenderness reserved for her family that she doesn’t often show. She’s contrasted wonderfully with Lindo, who is as endearing as ever as the loving father challenged with the task of being a good parent, but also realizing his own dreams, which proves to be far more difficult than it appears to be, especially when they come into conflict. Woodard and Lindo are exceptionally good, playing these parts with such extraordinary conviction, and giving some of their best performances to date. Lee’s work often highlights the talents in certain actors that often so unrecognized, and with their subtle but affecting work in Crooklyn, Woodard and Lindo are truly astonishing.

Lee crafts a delicate snapshot of the Brooklyn of his childhood with this film, working with his siblings to evoke a time that they remember only through the guise of memory, which is an essential component of a film like this, where replicating a childhood is a difficult task, especially because the majority of viewers will be adults. The fundamental merit of the approach Lee took to this film wasn’t to only recreate his own past, but create a sense of nostalgia for any viewer, which he does through showing the world not through rose-tinted glasses, but through borderline absurdity. Our childhoods are always defined by everything being more intimidating and daunting than we remember, but Lee doesn’t restrict himself in this regard, showing the mystique of our formative years with such marvellous sincerity. Everything was more colourful, more elusive and far more exciting when seen through the innocent eyes of a child, and he truly manages to evoke the spirit of youth with his magnificent work here. Recollections can result in films that are either tragically overwrought or delightfully endearing. Crooklyn is definitely aligned with the latter, with the strengths of this film lies in how effortlessly vibrant it is. The Brooklyn of 1973 truly comes alive in this film, with the director understanding that the key to making this kind of film doesn’t just lie in the broad strokes, but the smallest details, where something as simple as a song cue, a flash of colour or a piece of dialogue can launch us into the past in truly extraordinary ways.

Ultimately, Lee brings together all the various elements to make a truly masterful piece of realism in Crooklyn. The film occurs at the perfect intersection between his narrative brilliance and his talents behind the camera, where his use of colour and cinematography blend to form a very unconventional but endearing portrait of childhood, resulting in a beautifully complex coming-of-age story that is absolutely heartbreaking, but also so deeply soulful. There’s a vivacious streak running through this film, one that allows it to be a wildly entertaining portrait of existence, but where it’s still kept fiercely under control by the director, who makes sure to prevent outright chaos from engulfing this otherwise charming film. It all converges into a work of magnificent social realism, delivered with the sincerity that Lee has been known to make, especially when venturing towards very familiar stories. The pressure of urban life, the growing social change resulting from enormous strides being made in the Civil Rights Movement, and the general trials and tribulations of an ordinary family form the fundamental base of this beautifully complex tapestry of human existence, where every moment forms a pivotal part of what is undoubtedly one of the most touching explorations of life’s many challenges. Simultaneously shattering and adorable, this is Lee at his peak, where he could deliver wonderful social commentary in a form that deftly avoided being too heavy-handed (not that it’s ever been a flaw in his films) while still being as upbeat and hilarious as anything he’s done before or since. Crooklyn doesn’t get the respect it deserves, and while it is still quite rough around the edges, nothing can change the fact that it’s just a beautifully poetic story of life in its most distilled form, made by a director who, above everything else, not only respects humanity, but endeavours to portray it as honestly and he possibly can, which has never been more evident than it has in this gorgeously offbeat story of nothing only facing the uncertainty of the future, but openly embracing it as well.