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Malcolm X

1/7/2017

11 Comments

 

A-
​3.56

A biopic of Malcolm X, fairly self-explanatory

Directed by Spike Lee
Starring Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, and Al Freeman, Jr
​Initial Review by JR Peters

Picture
Malcolm X set how to humanize one of the most charismatic and controversial people of the 20th century.  Some might expect this movie to be very angry, but I found it to be a distinct lesson in empathy.  It provides with you with a look at Malcolm Little and the life events that led to him becoming Malcolm X and later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

As with the last movie I reviewed, School Daze, this movie was directed by Spike Lee.  With most of Lee’s movies, he attempts to make an impact with the opening credits and he successfully does it with this opening.  Showing the beating of Rodney King with a Denzel-voiced Malcolm X speech playing over it provides us with a reality that even though it has been decades since his death, his message is still just as relevant.  I have no doubt that if Lee were to release this movie in 2017 he would have plenty of footage to work with in this instance.  Eric Garner, Terence Crutcher, Philando Castile as well as many others.

Malcolm’s father was a preacher who taught Garveyism, which included separatism and the African diaspora returning to the motherland.  Many years later Malcolm would  preach for The Nation of Islam teaching the very same principles, but to an extreme.  Lee did a good job, showing the similarities in their lives without force feeding it down the viewers throat, which he has been known to do.  Through his father’s preaching early in the movie, we see why it was very easy to come to grips with the teachings of Elijah Muhammad (Al Freeman, Jr.) and Brother Baines (Albert Hall).

The story picks up with Malcolm getting a conk hairdo (think Nat King Cole) to which seeing that it worked correctly he says “looks white, don’t it?”.  An easy little quip to move past until later on the story when he is confronted by Brother Baines about wanting to be white and uses his conk as an example.  Malcolm attends a 40’s nightclub, dates 2 woman at the same time and is shown working as a waiter on a train before moving to New York and becoming a numbers runner and small time gangster before being thrown in jail for burglary.

During his time in jail, he’s shown being broken down by the system, but then lifted up through the words and teachings of Elijah Muhammad.  His high intelligence and willingness to learn is shown through his copying of the dictionary and willingness to confront the pastor of the prison.  It is in this prison that he parts ways with the final thing holding him back from being the self reliant black man that he has been called to be…his conk.  This is a sign that he has left his old life behind. 

Lee does a good job in showing Malcolm’s life after prison. Showing all of the public happenings that we all know about, but at the same time showing the private goings on of Malcolm, his family, and The Nation Of islam.  Malcolm’s wife Betty Shabazz, played by Angela Bassett is shown as the grounding factor keeping Malcolm from being all consumed by his fame and undying faith to The Nation of Islam.  Having brought to him the newspaper headline that caused him to start questioning his faith in Elijah Muhammad that in turn led to him leaving and converting to a Sunni Muslim.  In other movies, Lee has a problem presenting a real relationship that doesn’t seem forced or fake.  That did not happen in Malcolm X.  This may be due in fact to absolutely great actors but the situations that they were in also provided ways for them to keep it real.

The last year of Malcolm’s life is spent looking around corners and behind himself after splitting with the nation.  Lee shows Malcolm becoming a better man through his pilgrimage to Mecca.  When he gets back from Mecca is the only time Lee interjects a narrative into this movie.  He interjects his conspiracy that the FBI helped in the assassination of now Shabazz.  He shows Shabazz as a mirror image of his father the nights before he died.

Throughout the movie Lee doesn’t interject his own narrative until the very end.  He lets the life of Malcolm X speak for itself.  He shows that Malcolm was an ever evolving man that most didn’t know anything about and didn’t really understand.  He presents us with a masterclass in empathy as I believe that most would not be able to finish the movie without understanding why it was that Malcolm preached the things he did and at the same time why he was able to move away from them.

It’s hard for me to critique a movie that I consider to be one of my favorite and have seen it more than a half a dozen times. Couple that with Denzel Washington’s strongest performance, and a slew of other cast that bring great performances to the table and I think you have a great movie.  My only problem with it is that since I’ve read the Autobiography of Malcolm X there are some things that were left out that I believe should have been in the movie such as Malcolm X’s friendship with Muhammad Ali and the role that his sisters played in his life.  But I understand why for the sake of time and the movie they were left out, nobody likes a bloated movie.

This is an easy A.
11 Comments
John Robert Peters, Jr.
1/7/2017 08:28:55 pm

Show me what you got.

Reply
Bryan
1/9/2017 01:44:44 pm

I loved this one. My only complaint is not knowing what was real vs fiction. This should be mandatory viewing in middle schools. The debates and conversations would be eye opening for students.

Reply
John Robert Peters, Jr.
1/9/2017 02:26:10 pm

Read the book. You'll find out how much is real vs fake. But if I had a guesstimate it would be somewhere between 85-95. Spike Lee did a lot of research going into this movie including interviews with people in The Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan himself.

Reply
Jon
1/12/2017 11:22:12 pm

Grade? I see 'love,' I think somewhere in A territory.

Reply
Bryan
1/17/2017 11:06:27 pm

B+

Drew
1/9/2017 07:09:01 pm

When biopics or historical pieces are done, the director has an agenda. It usually portrays the lead character in a positive way or in his/her longstanding narrative thereby leaving out the character's whole story. Spike Lee had an agenda, like other biopic directors, but it was to tell Malcolm X's complicated story. And in "Malcolm X" he achieved it.

Truth be told, I am not Spike Lee's biggest fan. In every film, he lectures viewers on black people's struggle and yes, it was/is real and we need more education about it; make no mistake about it. But I just want to watch a movie.

What set me off against Spike Lee was his claim in the Reggie Miller 30 for 30 ("Winning Time") the Klan originated in Indiana. That could not be any further from the truth. It started in Tennessee. Perhaps he tried to make a larger point in that he does not feel comfortable in the Indiana and that is understood but that was a specific claim and it was incorrect. To a more important point, he is a fan of the New York Yankees.

Despite those (personal) problems, Lee did a fantastic job displaying the whole story of Malcolm X. Sure, there might have been some historical inaccuracies but they were small. The large scale evolution of Malcolm from a hustler and thief to political revolutionary - even his evolution in that - was fascinating. Because of the complicated tasks Lee achieved in this film, "Malcolm X" is his masterpiece. More on that later.

Who better to play Malcolm X than Denzel Washington? Viewers should examine Washington's career and ask the question "What happened to Denzel after _____?" The answer to that question would be "Malcolm X." This was his best performance. It paved the way for him to be in "Philadelphia," "Pelican Brief," "Crimson Tide," and "Remember the Titans." This was his film and Denzel owned it.

The only downside to the film was its length. It was an epic and took a while to explain things but there was no drag in it. Viewers saw a man change three times and there all important moments of his life.

Malcolm X was the 1960s version of W.E.B. DuBois and received little attention due to his short time in the Civil Rights Movement. He was an important figure in the movement and gets overlooked and honestly, it is not fair to him or his legacy for that to happen. To further that point, X's narrative is violence. People forgot (or refuse to remember) that he went to Mecca and saw all races cohesively worshiping. Also, how he was about to change his approach and possibly converge with King until his assassination ended that. Despite that, America needs more Malcolm X education.

Spike Lee is not my favorite director but this is, by far, his best film. He gets knocked down a half grade due to the film's length but it is great, regardless.

Grade: A

Reply
Jon
1/12/2017 12:13:56 am

Biopics are a troubled genre, as we discussed in Straight Outta Compton. There's a lot of shortcuts that have to be taken to fit a person's life into one film, to say nothing of the catch-22 where a filmmaker wants to tell the truest story but has to reckon with the estate of the subject. Spike Lee gets over the content problem in Malcolm X by making a 200+ minute long movie, which allows him to be as thorough as he wants to be. I also think he leaps the perspective problem by showing his subject honestly grappling with the many changes he went through in his too-short life. That's not to say Malcolm X is a perfect movie, or the best thing Lee's ever done. With Denzel Washington giving one of his best performances, and therefore one of the best performances ever, there's only so far the film can go off the rails, but with several frustrating choices, Lee finds a way to diminish the film that contains it.

By this period in Spike's career, he's already made his greatest film (Do the Right Thing), an incendiary ensemble drama that retains its relevance 27 years later. With Malcolm X, he's making a surface grab for respectability by putting out the type of film that wins awards, with Gandhi, Amadeus, and My Left Foot being big Oscar winners in the 80's. It turns out that this is the movie that Lee has always wanted to make, even if he just gets this one shot at it. He hasn't made anything like this familiar biography tale since, with its typical rhythms broken up by Lee's signature flair. This has its pluses, but Lee also makes some obtrusive choices that add nothing beyond annoyance. Coupled with one of the most punishing, generic scores to ever be added to a movie, and Malcolm X has some nagging problems.

Story-wise, Malcolm X is fairly airtight. I'll agree with Drew that there's no drag in the film. I'll even wish it was a little longer, the better to characterize the opposition to Malcolm. I understand that the Nation of Islam is built like a cult with its charismatic, messianic, ultimately hypocritical leader, protected by his closest surrogates who enrich themselves wherever possible and stomp out dissent. I get that as an outspoken apostate, they could only retaliate against Malcolm. I just wish we had more scenes with these guys, such that when Giancarlo Esposito or Wendell Pierce shows up, it's for a cameo. Maybe instead of drawing out Malcolm's assassination to an almost-interminable degree, we spend some time with the assassins instead.

With the negatives aside, I'll concur with the rest of the reviewers so far that, as far as biopics go, Malcolm X is one of the best. It thoroughly covers the major transitions in its subject's life, making each step coherent and understandable. It has an excellent sense of time and place, fully inhabiting the late-50's and 60's and placing its events within the churn of the period. There is a real sense that MLK is somewhere stage left, reacting to Malcolm's derision and later invigorated by the prospect of collaboration. Lee is also commenting on cinema history, with his intro that evokes the iconic opening of Patton, to John Travolta's Saturday Night Fever strut, and later replacing the leads of From Here to Eternity's famous beach shot with two black actors. He's effectively striking a blow for diversity, saying to these classics that they've had their turn, and now it's his.

Reply
Jon
1/12/2017 12:15:04 am

At the center of it all is Denzel. He's utilizing every tool in his workshop here to great effect. Lee knows how to make cool movies, and with Denzel, he's got one of the coolest men to ever grace the screen. The groan of Malcolm's leather glove as he's commanding his men to leave the hospital is all the evidence necessary of his leadership abilities. Denzel's playing cards that he doesn't often pull out. It never gets old to hear him have his way with a monologue, and Malcolm X allows him plenty, but I would be hard-pressed to give another example of Denzel playing scared, which he does here twice, both times affecting. He also doesn't play humbled too often, but his wordless crumbling in front of Elijah Muhammad during their first meeting is profound, even as the viewer knows that Muhammad is not going to be worthy of this adoration. This is the obvious Mediocrity Best Actor front runner. We'll have to pick a Daniel Day-Lewis movie down the road if there's going to be competition.

Thematically, Malcolm X speaks for itself. Lee isn't content to let Malcolm's words, powerful though they are, do all the talking. He includes horrific moments from Malcolm's childhood to drive the point home, that this is no country for black men of the variety that are not satisfied with a status quo that would, at best, invalidate and marginalize them. The conk motif that JR talks about is a tremendously potent symbol of cultural abuse and rejection, and a reminder that the world is just inherently easier for people like me. Malcolm's advocacy for self-segregation is eventually tempered, though his dream of unification relies on religious conversion, as in we could all get along if everyone was Muslim. No thank you, sir.

Is this movie oddly conservative in its message? Would a Malcolm that lived have found common cause with pre-accusation Bill Cosby? His sermons argue for a fallen world that is incapable of meaningful improvement, but the individual has the power to resist it. That sure sounds like a personal responsibility plea to me, especially coming from Malcolm the incorruptible when juxtaposed with the more hopeful and inclusive MLK who is a philanderer, and, gasp, a pork-eater. The gender roles, too, are downright Waltonian. It's unclear if Betty continues her work as a nurse once they have children, but the language of the film implies that she does not. That intersectionality (am I using that word right?) of gender and race does not get examined at all here, and is somewhat made worse by the possessive way the Nation and Malcolm talk about 'their' women. Not so much a knock on the film, but certainly something that stuck in my craw watching this in the age we currently live in.

This is not Spike Lee's best even as it is probably Denzel's, and with Spike making most of the decisions, it has to settle with very good instead of great. Parts of Malcolm X are stuck in traditional biopic sluggishness, particularly the ending and that goddamn score. Even with those complaints, Denzel puts this film on his shoulders, the MVP through and through. Biopics are getting more constricted in recent years, which I much prefer, but if a film is going to attempt to get the whole picture of a person's life, Malcolm X does about as well as can be done. B+

Reply
Bryan
1/12/2017 06:22:56 am

When you say "several frustrating choices" besides the score and end, to what are you referring?

Reply
Jon
1/12/2017 10:47:16 am

The dance scene where Spike looks directly into the camera for one, but the score is really bad and drags down scenes that are otherwise fine. The social worker scene is turned from tragic to maudlin by it, for example.

Reply
Cooker
2/3/2017 03:59:23 pm

Honestly, I knew who Malcolm X was, but didn’t know much about him aside from the basics. This was a well-done, well-acted biopic, but the runtime was a little too much. Some of the montages could’ve been shortened. And I felt that the time between him becoming a Muslim and when he went to Mecca got a little repetitive; speech after speech after speech. I also appreciate the eulogies and dedications toward the end, but again, some of this could’ve been cut. I apparently struggle with long runtimes. Overall, well-done. A-

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