Word: malcolm
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...film arrives, in more than the usual storm of tumult and hype that attends the premiere of a Spike Lee Joint. Even before shooting began, Lee conferred with Black Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan, an early associate of Malcolm's who has vexed many with his antiwhite, anti-Jewish harangues. Lee also hired a Black Muslim security force as bodyguards on the set. He fought publicly with his distributor (Warner Bros.) and insurer (the Completion Bond Co.) when work on the overbudget film was suspended. Then he solicited and received gifts from black entertainers (Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey) to help...
Spike Lee is a logo maker of genius. It seems as if half the T shirts worn by American kids tout Lee's BUTTON YOUR FLY campaign for Levi's jeans, and half of the baseball caps carry the defiant initial X -- a clever device that raised consciousness of Malcolm and, not incidentally, advertised Lee's movie biography a year before its release...
...surprise about Malcolm X is how ordinary it is. The film is a lavish, linear, way-too-long (3 hr. 21 min.) storybook of Malcolm's career, the movie equivalent of an authorized biography, a cautious primer for black pride. It is Lee's biggest film, and the least Spikey. At one point in producer Marvin Worth's 26-year hajj to get this movie made, and before he was persuaded that an African American should direct the movie, Norman Jewison (A Soldier's Story) wanted to do it. If Jewison had, the product would be about the same. Only...
...lure of movie biography is to show the contours in a life of significance. Working from a screenplay written in the late '60s by James Baldwin and Arnold Perl, Lee splays Malcolm's story across a 40-year panorama of Americana (the film cost $34 million, but it looks twice as expensive and expansive). In the mid-'20s, Malcolm Little's parents are threatened by the Ku , Klux Klan. In the '30s he finds both acceptance and isolation in white foster homes and white schools. In the '40s Malcolm (embodied with potent charm by Denzel Washington) is a rakish dude...
...sketches Malcolm's life colorfully, if by the numbers. But he falls victim to the danger of movie biography: he elevates Malcolm's importance until the vital historical context is obscured. Malcolm came of age in an era of great black oratory. Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Adam Clayton Powell, Eldridge Cleaver, Maya Angelou had no power but in their minds and throats and pens. And what force, what rage, what music they found there...