I think if Malcolm X were alive to see Spike Lee’s 1992 film about his life, he would admire how Lee put the film together more than the film itself. Lee helped campaign Warner Bros and Norman Jewison (the film’s original director) to hand the project over to him, feeling only a black filmmaker could adequately portray Malcolm X. He was also able to secure financing from wealthy black entrepreneurs and artists, Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby among them, after Warner Bros. refused to agree to a larger budget and three-hour running time. Lee was in some ways channelling Malcolm’s own message of black economic uplift and Afro-American unity in his efforts, something Malcolm would be proud of.
Watching Malcolm X almost 20 years later, I’m less impressed with the film in its portrayal of Malcolm X largely because of what I learned from reading Manning Marable’s excellent biography (see my review here). Lee’s film, like the Autobiography of Malcolm X which it’s based on, is a heavily fictionalized take on Malcom’s life, leaving out very important details for the sake of creating a more straight-forward narrative.
What struck me about watching Malcolm X today is how much stronger the first act of the movie is. Lee captures the look and style of 1940s Harlem perfectly, from the swing music to the zoot suits; his visual style is perfectly suited to the era. Malcolm’s relationship with a gangster named West Indian Archie (Delroy Lindo) is particularly compelling. The scene where the two men first meet in a restaurant is brilliant. It’s like they’re playing a chess match to see who can out-con the other.
I was also struck by Denzel Washington’s performance. At the time, he was no doubt the only logical choice to play Malcolm despite looking nothing like the man (Malcolm was four inches taller, lighter-skinned and much skinnier than Washington). Still, watching him deliver those speeches, exhibiting the same mannerisms and vocal range as Malcolm, is astonishing. Watch the scenes where Washington speaks in front of black audiences - loud, passionate and angry - versus ones in front of white audiences where he’s subtle, relaxed, and less animated. But he's still no match for the real thing, and his performance as Malcolm in those scenes is at best a really good impersonation. This is why the first part of the film, where we see him as a hustler nicknamed "Detroit Red," is much stronger. Here, Washington is able to craft his own interpretation of Malcolm’s early days, and his performance in those scenes is some of the best the work he’s ever done. This scene in particular, where a pre-Training Day Washington does some Alonzo Harris shit on a weak con-man named Rudy.
Lee’s film is also interesting in how it tries to give Malcolm a father-figure, not only in Elijah Muhammad (Al Freeman, Jr.), whom Malcolm would grow to worship and later scorn, but also in two fictional characters - West Indian Archie and Baines (Albert Hall). He also shows a somewhat tender relationship between Malcolm and his wife Betty Shabazz (Angela Bassett), a relationship Marable’s book says was much more loveless and mechanical than the film leads us to believe.
Lee interestingly chose not to address Malcolm’s evolving political philosophy, including his interest in socialism, and only makes a passing references to his interest in Pan-Africanism. Instead, more attention is paid to his split with the Nation of Islam, which occurred, we’re shown, because Elijah Muhammad liked having sex with young women. Malcolm’s remarks about the Kennedy assassination aside, there’s barely a mention of the ideological differences and the change in Malcolm’s political thought that would cause him to question most if not all of the Nation’s teachings.
It’s largely due to this negation that I found Malcolm X somewhat incomplete. I don’t necessarily fault Lee for going in the direction he chose to go in, however, since I think a film showing Malcolm’s political evolution would have been nearly impossible to dramatize. Lee’s take is a straight-up, and some might say conservative, look at Malcolm X’s life. A more radical interpretation remains to be seen.
