Title: She’s Gotta Have It (1986)
Director: Spike Lee
Duration: 1h 24m
Cast: Spike Lee, Tracy Camilla Jones, Tommy Redmond, Joie Lee, John Canada Terrell, Cheryl Burr.
A Spike Lee joint like no other, She’s Gotta Have It is Lee’s first picture and it is one hell of a picture too. For its time, this was a revolutionary film. Controversial, yes, but Spike Lee has always been the one guy who had the balls to touch on the most unsettling topics and make a movie out of them (as seen in Do The Right Thing, School Daze, Clockers, Girl 6, Pass Over). If Spike Lee wanted to make a movie about a nymphomaniac young woman who had three boyfriends at the same time, nobody could stop him and that was exactly what this film was about.
She’s Gotta Have It opens with a monologue from the main character, Nola Darling, played by Tracy Camilla Jones, and in the monologue, she claims the only reason she’s saying anything is because she wishes to clear her name. And so, naturally, the film is shot in documentary style with each of the characters having their say in the subject, Nola. The film follows as she strings three men along and makes them compete for her attention even though it’s clear she doesn’t really want any of them.
There’s enough sex and nudity in She’s Gotta Have It for four movies and you can’t help but think of the movie as an art film with elements of romance, drama, and comedy. At heart, it is indeed an art film, not a romantic comedy or any genre at all for that matter. Spike Lee showed with this movie why he is one of the artistic geniuses of his generation. This was the kind of work only auteur filmmakers like Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola were making in America at the time. You think of the style and what comes to mind is Woody Allen’s Manhattan and Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish.
She’s Gotta Have It, for what it’s worth is a Black film from a black filmmaker but it could as well have been white. The film is made in such a way that it transcends race and simply situates itself as a social consciousness film. But well, of course, Spike Lee is black, the setting is black, all the important characters are black and it’s a piece of black history, even if it’s not very popular and alas, very underappreciated by people who have seen it.
Spike Lee, of course, went on to make arguably better films (Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing) but even if this were to be his magnum opus, he would still be considered a great and exceptional filmmaker. Besides, you don’t just make a film like She’s Gotta Have It and then fall off the face of the earth anyway.
The film was a box office success grossing $7.1m over a meagre $175,000 budget. She’s Gotta Have It is a masterpiece and if you know, you know.
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.6/5
Where to Watch She’s Gotta Have It (1986)?
You can be able to stream She’s Gotta Have It (1986) by renting or purchasing on
- Apple TV
- Google Play Movies
- Vudu
- Netflix
