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I person to commencement with Crooklyn, due to the fact that this is wherever I was archetypal introduced to the legendary Delroy Lindo. He plays Woody: jazz purist, patriarch, and the affectional backbone of the Carmichael family. Woody is the opus humming beneath each scene, which is saying a batch amid the chaos of raising 5 kids successful a 1970s Brooklyn brownstone.
Buuuuut let’s support it 100. One happening astir Woody? He knows however to bounce a check. I’m conscionable saying. While Carolyn (Alfre Woodard) can’t adjacent instrumentality a piss without six radical hanging disconnected her tits, Woody is the 1 who utilized to wage for everyone to spell to Bloomingdale’s and Lord & Taylor to get what they wanted, erstwhile they wanted. (Yes, I’ve seen this movie a 1000 times, and no, that’s not an exaggeration.)
The mode Delroy Lindo builds toward Woody’s breaking constituent feels existent to a musician’s spirit, and successful the brawl that erupts aft Carolyn storms into Troy’s country to chopped disconnected the boys’ Knicks game, we spot precisely what happens erstwhile a imagination is deferred.
Woody is carrying Carolyn retired of Troy’s room. Troy is successful the bathroom, stuffing her garment with balled-up toilet paper. Joseph is pounding connected the bath door. Nate is pushing Woody. Wendell is tackling him. Troy is screaming. Carolyn is being dragged. Chile, it’s a mess, but erstwhile Woody yet settles connected that stairway, everything collapses inward. The walls adjacent in. The sound drops. And it inactive comes backmost to his old-school, refined dignity arsenic helium says, "What I want… is immoderate respect… for my work… successful this house…" The cadence is musical—measured, aching—a outcry for assistance shaped similar a melody.
Woody is clinging to an thought of himself arsenic a "pure musician, playing axenic music" successful a satellite already moving toward stone and disco, advancement and paychecks. His stubbornness doesn’t work arsenic ego; it reads arsenic grief. He knows he’s failing his family, and it shows successful his posture, but helium can’t reconcile that nonaccomplishment with the dignity he’s built his full individuality around.
As a child, I adored Woody. He’s the genitor who’s not going to marque you devour your peas (ice cream and soil barroom person entered the chat). But arsenic an adult, I look astatine him like, sirrrrrr, you gotta assistance wage the bills. And yet, Delroy Lindo’s show is truthful integrated that there’s nary mode to hatred oregon adjacent justice Woody. He infuses him with a deep, vibrating emotion for his children, 1 that makes you basal for him adjacent erstwhile you cognize however the movie ends and however helium volition yet person to measurement up to the plate.
Shout-out to Joie Lee, Cinqué Lee, and Spike Lee for penning specified a layered character, but it’s Delroy Lindo who makes Woody much than his flaws. He turns him into a antheral caught betwixt who helium was raised to beryllium and who the satellite present demands helium become. And Crooklyn understands thing devastatingly true: sometimes the hardest happening a antheral tin bash isn’t providing. It’s letting spell of the imagination helium thought would prevention him.
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