We get into the Civil Rights Era with Spike Lee’s three and a half hour biopic Malcolm X. Malcolm X is one of the more misunderstood figures of American history, often framed as the violent alternative to the more deified Martin Luther King, Jr. While his language was definitely harsher and he had his few truly questionable statements (such as saying that President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was brought upon himself), he never actually preached violence as a general rule and when he did it was in the context of self-defense. He was more likely to call black people to build themselves up into dignified persons than keep begging for white approval.
While
the movie is heavily identified with Spike Lee (who has made many movies on the
topic of racism), it was actually the final product of a quarter century dream
of producer Marvin Worth. Worth admired Malcolm X so much that he quickly
bought the rights to The Autobiography of
Malcolm X (which the civil rights leader co-wrote with Roots author Alex Haley). This book was still being written when
Malcolm was assassinated, so Haley added on a final section to detail the end
of his life. Actually, he at first produced a 1972 documentary which got an
Oscar nomination for that category. It was 1992 when the story would get a
proper dramatic treatment.
The movie follows the book closely, so any inaccuracies or exaggerations are really a byproduct of some of the liberties that Malcolm X and Alex Haley took. Surprisingly, Spike Lee is able to cover the subject’s entire life without the major pitfalls of biopics that attempt this. To be fair, his life was cut short before he was 40. The movie starts hard with footage of the police beating Rodney King while Malcolm X delivers one of his more incendiary speeches about the white man. The movie then makes an intentional mood whiplash by showing a young Malcolm X (when he was Malcolm Little) go with his friend Shorty to the barber’s to make his woolly African hair straight like a white man’s. As in real life, Malcolm X stands out for having red hair, unusually for an African-American, because of inherited genes from a white man who raped his maternal grandmother.
It
actually takes nearly an hour to get to the more familiar Malcolm X, as Spike
Lee wants to show the incredible personal transformation the man went through.
Denzel Washington plays the titular character in an Oscar-nominated
performance. At the beginning he’s unrecognizable from the historical figure as
a grinning young man who just wants to be cool with his friend Shorty (played
by Spike Lee himself). Behind his smiles, though, are a few narrated flashbacks
showing how his father, a Baptist preacher and advocate of Marcus Garvey’s
pan-African nationalism, was threatened then murdered by white supremacist
groups in Nebraska and Michigan. There’s also a flashback showing the moment
when his teacher dashed his high career hopes by saying black people can’t
become lawyers. The movie actually softens this moment, as in real life the
teacher employed the n-word. The result was that an embittered Malcolm dropped
out of school and spent his youth working menial jobs and getting into crime.
"West Indian" Archie (Delroy Lindo) talks business with a pre-X Malcom.
The
movie then turns into a truncated crime drama when Malcolm joins up with Harlem
racketeer West Indian Archie (Delroy Lindo). This is one part of the
autobiography historians tend to question, with research suggesting that
Malcolm played up his tenure in the numbers racket. Indeed, I almost forgot I
was watching a movie about a famed activist because the plot mimicked so many
fictional movies: Young hungry criminal impresses the boss and gets a job,
young guy rises through the ranks, young guy starts to get ambitious and runs
afoul of the boss, then young guy either manages to kill and replace the boss
or ends up on the run. Malcolm ends up on the run, forming a little gang with
Shorty and their white girlfriends before they are captured by the police and
put in prison.
In
prison, Baines (Albert Hall playing a fictional composite of several people
including some of Malcolm’s own siblings), recognizes Malcolm’s natural
intelligence and introduces him to the teachings of the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm reinvents himself, studying hard from the prison library, embracing his
natural woolly hair, and replacing Little with X since Little is regarded as a
slave name inherited from his ancestors’ slave master (funnily enough, many
freed slaves had actually already changed their last names to distance
themselves from their previous owners). Once he gets out of prison, Malcolm
joins the Nation of Islam proper.
Al
Freeman Jr. portrays its leader, Elijah Muhammad, who was a charismatic
figurehead of what can be considered an original American religion despite its
claim to Islam. Here’s a brief explanation of it, as the movie doesn’t provide
all the main tenets. The rationale behind the Nation of Islam is that Islam is
a true African religion, and that founder Wallace Fard Muhammad was a literal
personification of Allah. The movie doesn’t get into some of the arguably
goofier aspects of the religion such as the idea that Yakub (Jacob from the
Bible) was a geneticist who created the aberrant white race. More relevant to
our main character is that the Nation of Islam promoted blacks’ self-ownership
in education and economics, and also a firm moral code that supported the
traditional family and forbade drugs, tobacco, alcohol, and (because they are
Muslims) pork. It also taught a black ethno-nationalism which encouraged
separation from non-blacks.
Malcolm's correspondence with the Nation of Islam is represented with Elijah Muhammad
appearing as a divine vision, glowing with a supernatural golden light.
Malcolm
X took all these ideas seriously, resulting in a complete turnaround from his
pre-Muslim life. Throughout the second act of the movie we get numerous parts
of his speeches where he preaches on black self-worth, the need for self-sufficiency,
and ways that whites keep blacks down. He is such a great speaker that even
though Elijah Muhammad is the head of the Nation, he becomes its face, drawing
large crowds and driving up recruitment. I did notice that Spike Lee did not
include certain quotes that would have offended Hollywood culture, most notably
Malcolm X’s most well-known warning about white liberals (though his “Uncle
Tom” attack on Martin Luther King Jr. is included). Here’s a good place to
explain the ways that people misread this movie. Spike Lee shows Malcolm X as
an evolving thinker, which means that many of his statements before the third act
are not meant to be taken at face value. However, perhaps because of the corny
ending (we’ll get to that), many viewers come away from the movie imbibing some
of his more harshly anti-white sayings.
One
example is the scene, based on a real interaction, where a white blonde college
girl approaches Malcolm X and says she’s so inspired by him that she wants to
help him in his quest for black dignity and equality and asks what she can do.
Malcolm brusquely tells her “nothing”. After he goes inside a building, the
camera lingers on the girl, showing how hurt she is. If you watch the clip on
Youtube, you’ll see clips about how awesome Malcolm X’s short answer was or how
she’s just like all the dumb white liberal college students. However, in his
autobiography Malcolm, having changed his views over the years, said this was
one of his most regretful moments, as he realized she genuinely wanted to help
and he could have gotten a start on improving racial harmony. Because there’s
so much to put into this movie and audiences are likely to forget this small
scene, Spike Lee couldn’t effectively put X’s regret into the movie.
The movie shows the time Malcolm X built up his reputation by organizing a successful
protest to get a beaten black arrestee with life-threatening injuries to a hospital.
Malcolm
X gets married to Betty Shabazz (Angela Bassett), a nurse who’s also interested
in being an educator. The movie somewhat changes how they get together.
One-on-one dates were taboo in the Nation of Islam, so they got to know each
other in group events and outings. The movie wants them to have more intimate
moments before the marriage, so they’ll meet up in places with other Nation
members around, but still be somewhat far off from them. Showing his personal
change, Malcolm X becomes a very devoted family man, so much so that he begins
to question some of the Nation’s teachings when he learns that Elijah Muhammad
is using his position to have relations with young female members and then pay
them off to avoid scandal.
This
leads to the third act, where Malcolm X starts to split from the Nation and
head towards Sunni Islam. He decides to take the actual pilgrimage to Mecca,
and has his view of race relations radically changed when he sees blacks,
Arabs, and even whites getting along with each other through their religion.
Here is where a large section of Malcolm X’s life is excised. Lee leaves out
that after his Mecca experience he began to tour internationally, traveling all
over Africa and also going to the UK. He was such a compelling speaker that
several of the Muslim Nationalist leaders in the Middle East tried to get him
into their governments.
Understandably,
the movie cuts right back to Malcolm X’s return, where he starts his own
mosque. There’s less emphasis on his political and racial views, though to be
honest much of it actually didn’t change. He still preached self-improvement
and moral development like the Nation, but now embraced cooperation with
non-blacks and participation in the Civil Rights movement (he also ditched the
idea that Wallace Fard Muhammad was Allah incarnate since he was now Sunni). The
movie focuses more on how Malcolm’s life is becoming endangered. Incredibly,
despite all his previous rhetoric against the white man, it was the Nation of
Islam that became his arch-enemy, sending death threats to him and his family.
First his house is firebombed, with Spike Lee drawing visual comparisons to what happened to his father's house in Michigan. It’s showing how terroristic violence is not limited to just one race,
and in fact can be directed against one’s own.
Spike Lee and Denzel Washington recreated the famous
photo of Malcolm X looking out his window for assassins
Malcolm
X’s assassination is accurately depicted onscreen, down to how Nation gunman Talmadge
Hayer (Giancarlo Esposito in one of his earlier film roles) gets shot in the
leg during his getaway. Because of time constraint, Spike Lee doesn’t get into
all the theories and controversies surrounding the assassination, such as how
two other convicted Nation members were found innocent way later in 2021. At least members of the
Nation of Islam was definitely involved, but the question of whether elements
of the American government were involved or not is left up to the audience to
decide. Lee shows the FBI wiretapping Malcolm X when he’s trying to avoid
Nation hits. This can be read as them simply running their own separate
operation, trying to use or help the Nation, or knowing about the planned
assassination, but choosing to do nothing.
This
is a pretty good movie, but the ending is a bit strange. After three hours of
letting filmmaking and choice dialogue get the audience to think, Lee literally
has Nelson Mandela stand up in front of a classroom explaining exactly how we
should think about Malcolm X. Oddly, after showing that the figure was a
complex individual who had to adjust his way of thinking several times, Lee
suddenly wants every black viewer to declare that “I am Malcolm X!” Fun fact:
Mandela quotes a passage from Malcolm X’ autobiography, but refuses to use the
words “by any means necessary” because it can promote violence. Lee got around
this by splicing in the actual X saying the words.
You might have noticed throughout this review
that Louis Farrakhan, the man who rescued the Nation of Islam from
disintegration and is still the leader today, is completely absent despite
having been an active and rising member during Malcolm X’s life. Lee had
intended to utilize him as a supporting character, but kept getting harassed by
the Nation of Islam. According to the director Farrakhan even sent him persoal threats. Though removed, he still criticized the movie for having the Nation involved with the assassination, claiming this is a lie.
A typically well-dressed Nation of Islam Gathering, where Malcolm X gives one of his speeches
Malcolm X is very long
even by biopic standards, but does a great job showing all the phases of an
intriguing figure’s life. Despite one’s views on X or civil rights or Islam,
one can’t help but admire a man who went from being a low-tier criminal to one
of the most riveting speakers and thinkers of 20th Century America.
As in real life, it is frustrating and sad to see Malcolm X get gunned down
just as he’s entering a completely new phase of his life. It would have been
interesting to see what he would have thought about the rest of the 20th
Century.
Rating:
8/10
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