Malcolm X (1992) – 3/5

„Malcolm X“ is a pretty short title for this super-long movie from 1992, so this one had its 30th anniversary last year. It runs for three hours and twenty-two minutes by the way, so this easily could also be watched in two or even four sittings with some kind of miniseries approach. You could even structure the film into four parts, like 1) the early years, 2) the prison term, 3) the rise to power and 4) the fall from grace (final years). Quite a lot for a life that did not last too long. It is one of the more-, but maybe not most-seen releases by writer and director Spike Lee and I saw this yesterday on a one-time occasion in one of my most-frequented movie theaters. The room was full, but it was not a super big room and also it was all condensed there because, as I just stated, you could not watch the film another day. This was nominated for two Oscars. The first nod went to lead actor Denzel Washington, who was already an Oscar winner at that point and had another nomination and this was the first time he was nominated in the lead category. More nominations would follow over the years and he also took home many critics awards for his portrayal here. Now he has two wins and the same is true for Ruth E. Carter, the costume designer who scored the second Academy Award nomination for this movie. Her biggest triumphs were pretty recent as she won her Oscars for the two Black Panther movies.

Apart from Lee, there are also two other writers credited here, but those were rather in charge of the base material: The first is Alex Haley who wrote a book that contained the word autobiography and he died in 1992, so the exact same year this film came out and Arnold Perl scored an Oscar nomination in the 1970s for a documentary on Malcolm X and that one was already posthumous, so by 1992 he was gone for 20 years already. Which means that the only one truly in charge of the screenplay here was Spike Lee too and that is no huge surprise as for most of his other films, he was also the only one who wrote the screenplay. In his newest films, Lee did not appear in front of the camera, but here he plays a supporting character, a man who is at some point the protagonist’s best friend and is featured fairly frequently especially in the first third of the film. He was rather in it for comic relief you could say, like with this short comment he makes when he gets a letter from Malcolm X. Denzel is of course the guy who plays this character here and he is in almost every scene from beginning to end. I will get to that/him a little later. Now it can still be said that you will find a few more familiar faces in the cast. Angela Bassett was now in 2023 probably really close to winning an Oscar and I just mentioned Black Panther, so you can say that her collaboration with Carter (not Coach Carter) goes back over three decades. Delroy Lindo also has solid recognition value, at least the name, even if I have a hard time to really make up my mind on which other projects I saw him. Wendell Pierce is always nice too. Giancarlo Esposito is also in here and he has worked with Lee on other occasions too. But it takes until almost the very end for us to see Esposito and if I wasn’t such a big Breaking Bad fan, then it would not be so special for me either. But I am and thus I appreciated his inclusion and wished there could have been more of him in here, especially as I knew he was in this one. Just didn’t know about the significance of the role. Well, it is a significant character, even if he does not have too much screen time and even if findings about the exact course of the assassination may lead to the conclusion that this film is not really historically accurate towards the end.

But let’s not talk too much about the killers here now, instead talk about the man this is all about: Denzel Washington gives a strong performance here and they also did a good job to lead us through the decades with his physicality. I mean Washington was in his mid30s when he appeared in here and he looks mid-20s at the beginning or even younger. Towards the end, then maybe the beard and glasses helped, but I still think that the make-up crew also could have deserved an Oscar nomination here. By the way, Malcolm X is even credited as one of the writers here too, so there are actually four. The film is really long, so I cannot discuss every scene, but I liked for example what Washington did towards the end the moment Malcolm is shot, the way he almost smiled at the guy standing in front of him with the gun. It was probably not historically accurate, but still decent. The earlier martyr quote was too much though. Even if this film is about an actually existing person, there is no way that all you see in here was exactly like that in reality, no matter if we are talking about the prison term or about the scene in which he runs from the guy who wants to kill him in a duel early on. He visits said man later, but I am still wondering why the guy even wanted to kill him. The rise to success from the young Malcolm to him almost getting killed by his mentor felt a bit rushed. But yeah, maybe still fine because otherwise the film would have lasted for four hours. Eventually, you can say that a lot was added for dramatic purposes here. One quote or scene I really remember is when the title character finds some tolerance for White people eventually. He says that he is not angry at the entire race anymore, relatively close to the end already, because he does not support racism and this is a quote that is crucial in today’s context because it shows that not even Malcolm X was as racist as people are today when they say the concept of Black-against-White racism does not even exist. People who say so are void of all scientific understanding really. And historic. But that is another story.

I actually even worry that Lee himself could have forgotten about these words by now and might himself believe the nonsense I just mentioned. He has always been a bit on the radical side, but the last few years have been especially worrying. Sadly, he is getting away with it while White directors with the same approach (the other way around) would never find work in the industry again. This also fits if you look at the justification towards the end there when the importance and significance of Malcolm X is underlined there. So the film surely has one massive downside if we look at the radical views of the man it is about and how for some bizarre reason Spike and the rest are still trying to present him to us as a likable man. The crimes during his younger years arenn’t helping either. There are other specific examples in here: Just take the blonde who approaches Malcolm on one occasion and asks what she can do to help his cause and his answer is at that point of course still very much biased through racist prejudice. That potential activist was pretty stunning by the way and same is true when it comes to a reporter from close to the end. But Malcolm X here was only interested in Bassett’s character and if you needed any proof that times were different back then, then you get it in the way he proposes. But yeah, back to the film’s political content: Maybe the other guest in this talk show there on one occasion was not wrong when he calls the protagonist a demagogue. It is debatable towards the end then if this description is still fitting, but at that earlier stage of the film, it is not far-fetched at all. They also make it very clear that we do not forget who the bad guys are in this film as the term „White Devil“ was used on many occasions and when we have scenes that move towards another antagonist, one who has maybe the same color like the protagonist, they randomly change the action to White extremists immediately after.

There was one specific example of very poor editing here: I think it was the scene in which Lindo’s character has the intention to kill Malcolm and, all of a sudden, they get in another flashback to the main character’s youth when we see how his father is not violent enough to kill the KKK members and pays for that with his own life. I mean in theory that was a good inclusion because it explains why Malcolm was on the radical side and this was not the only time when someone dear was taken from him, but I honestly would have preferred if they included everything linked to his father in one long sequence very early on. Towards the end then there is of course the priceless irony that they hardly could have made this film exclusively about Malcolm’s hatred against the White race still because it was his own guys, the ones of his color who belong to the organization he shaped so much himself, who killed him. It wasn’t fascists, it wasn’t racist KKK members, it wasn’t violent White men from the countryside. This leaves a crucial impact for sure on the key message here in terms of who Malcolm was stepping up against the most. At least publicly. After this meeting with his (former) leader who he respected so much and when he finds out about what the man did with these young females, his ideals were shattered and he probably hated his former group a lot as well, maybe even more than the White race in general as I already mentioned the quote when he says that he doesn’t oppose them as a whole anymore. This is pretty much it then. Overall, I would say this is a decent film that is elevated by Washington’s performance and with a less talented lead actor, I maybe would not have given a positive recommendation for this one. The film as a whole could have been better I think in terms of the writing, even if it is individual scenes and sequences then that feel somewhat memorable. Or don’t. You will know what I mean when you see them. Maybe the one that stayed most in the mind for me was when Malcolm and his folks were heading out to make sure an injured friend is taken care of. That one also had nice music. So yeah, it’s a thumbs-up for me here all in all, but not an enthusiastic one.