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Denzel Washington dominates in Spike Lee's masterpiece Malcolm X |
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington (Malcolm X), Angela Bassett (Betty
Shabazz), Albert Hall (Brother Baines), Al Freeman Jnr (Elijah Muhammad),
Delroy Lindo (West Indian Archie), Spike Lee (Shorty), Roger Guenveur Smith
(Rudy), Theresa Randal (Laura), Kate Vernon (Sophia), Lonette McKee (Louise
Little), Tommy Hollis (Earl Little), James McDaniel (Brother Earl), Steve White
(Brother Johnson), Ernest Lee Thomas (Sidney), Christopher Plummer (Prison
Chaplin Gill), Peter Boyle (NYPD Captain Green)
In the early 1990s, Norman Jewison was attached to direct a
biopic of Malcolm X, the powerful African-American activist, tragically
assassinated in 1965. It was the project of Spike Lee’s dreams – and Jewison
conceded he did not have the vision for the film that Lee clearly had. Lee
stepped in – and thank goodness, as this is perhaps a film only he could have
made. It splices together Lee’s customary political savvy and (accurate) sense
of the injustice Black Americans have faced with a surprisingly adept use of
the cinematic language of David Lean and other sweeping epics. In bringing
these together, he created a superb biography, a great piece of epic cinema and
a vital piece of American film-making.
The film covers the life of Malcolm X in three clear stages.
Firstly his young days as a tearaway in Harlem, with drug addiction and crime,
all with best friend Shorty (Spike Lee), a local gangster whom he admires
(Delroy Lindo) and white girlfriend Sophia (Kate Vernon). The second act is his
conversion to Islam under the guidance of (fictional) Brother Baines (Albert
Hall) and his rise as an incendiary speaker with the Nation of Islam under the
influence of its leader Elijah Muhammad (Al Freeman Jnr). The final act covers his
disillusionment and departure from that organisation after a host of scandals
and political disagreements, his pilgrimage to Mecca and his return looking to
work with other civil rights movements before his assassination by former
members of the Nation of Islam.
It’s hard to know whose film to call this, because Spike Lee
and Denzel Washington both invest this film with so much passion, director and
actor working in perfect synchronicity, that it’s impossible to imagine the
film without one or other of them. Washington’s performance is quite simply
extraordinary. He spent over a year of focused preparation on the film, and
every pore of his body seems to have soaked in the mood, manners and attitudes
of Malcolm X. It’s a transformative performance of purest emotional commitment:
impassioned, empowering and enthralling, charismatic in the extreme. He never
shies away from the anger and the faults of Malcolm X, but so engrossingly
human is his work that he brings to life in a way few people had before
Malcolm’s humanity, his generosity, his love, his decency. It’s a performance
that seems to have transformed the actor into the man and the film works so
well because Washington completely involves you in his story.
Washington should have won the Oscar that year – it went
instead to Al Pacino – and Malcolm X
also should have been nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, far more so
than Scent of a Woman nominated in
both categories. It’s a film that builds its audience’s empathy so successfully
with its lead character, and so clearly understands what Malcolm was trying to
do, that you come away from it full of respect and admiration for the man. Even
when the film was made, many people saw Malcolm X as a divisive, even dangerous
figure – but watching the film you forget that and invest in him as a man.
It’s also inarguable – as n-words and racial bias from many
whites in the film litter the screen – that it opened the eyes of many people
as to exactly how harsh living in America was at the time if you were black.
Put simply, it was a country labouring constantly under injustice, persecution
and suffering where a black life was worth less than a white one. It’s a theme
that Lee has returned to time and again in his work – and quite rightly – and
it’s the sort of masterclass of simmering political anger that powers the best
of his work. Would any other director under the sun have chosen to open this
film with footage of the Rodney King beating? Would anyone else have thought of
ending it with a coda in South Africa, as Nelson Mandela (yes the real Nelson
Mandela) addresses a classroom full of children about the importance and power
of Malcolm’s vision of black people taking pride in themselves and their
heritage – a pride beaten out of them still today, as Lee’s Rodney King footage
shows.
Lee’s direction is quite simply superb, a wonderful fusion
of his own styles with a classical sweep of David Lean, spiced with the textual
play of Oliver Stone. The photography from Ernest Dickerson is wonderful, the
film is beautifully cut and assembled and the recreation of period detail from
set to costume is remarkable. Lee’s style is sublime, from a riotously fun
Harlem song and dance routine (really impressive) with Malcolm others dancing a
superb Lindy Hop, to the harshness of prison, through to the intelligent and
acute analysis of growing divisions in the Nation of Islam (Al Freeman Jnr is
fabulous as Elijah Muhammed) and Malcolm’s developing political stance.
Lee’s film is even-handed on the whole – Malcolm’s real
opponents are ideological disagreements, the film dramatizes a moment Malcolm
considered a great regret where he rudely brushed aside a white college student
keen to help his cause, and the film makes a lot of play over his controversial
opinions on Kennedy’s assassination (essentially that he deserved it). But it
also builds a superb sense of Malcolm’s personal life alongside, and the film
is crammed with moments of quiet intimacy and a wonderfully developed
performance of supportive love from Angela Bassett as Betty.
But the Lee touch is in that sense of anger. The politics
and fury of Malcolm’s speeches and his message to black people today to save
themselves and find pride in themselves carry through the whole film. Lee was
sick and tired of the “white saviour” film and he triumphantly made here a film
that was by black people, about black people but had something for all to hear.
Malcolm X is a superb piece of
biography cinema that leaves you with justifiable admiration for a man it’s
easy to misjudge, engrosses you in a complex and disturbing era, angers you at
racism and its impact, and also leaves you entertained. In many ways the most
classical of Lee’s films – but a reminder that he is a unique and compelling
voice. He thought he was the only one that could tell this story. He was right.
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