X

I am inclined to call Malcolm X, a film that always leaves me cold, Spike Lee’s most transformational film. Anna Everett writes in her essay what I will admit is a throwaway line: “[F]ew would argue that Lee’s Malcolm X is not an impressive achievement. In fact, the film garnered two Academy Award nominations – best actor for Washington and best costume design for Ruth Carter.” Academy Award nominations are hardly the criteria anyone should employ in deciding whether or not a movie is an “impressive achievement.” I found Lee’s Malcolm X weirdly neutered and I found Lee’s whitewashing of some of X’s more unsavory political ideas standard biopic fare. In that, I would say the film is transformational, in that it turned one of the most feared and beloved black figures in American history into a child-friendly monument that fifth graders could comfortably study for African-American History Month.

The finest appraisals of Malcolm X acknowledge the more problematic aspects of his personality. In Ossie Davis’s famous eulogy, the one in which he kills him “our shining black prince,” he also calls him a “bigot.” Malcolm X’s views on race relations did indeed evolve throughout his life. His autobiography, which is based on interviews conducted over a five year period captures that evolution well. In the last few months he claimed to be an agnostic on whether or not whites and blacks should marry one another, a radical departure from previous statements. Still, to the very end, he remained a rabid anti-Semite. Lee fails to capture the subtlety of X’s changing intelligence. I’d be curious to know how James Baldwin’s original script handled the issue. And he shies away completely from X’s anti-Semitic bullying.

Instead, we get what amounts to a standard hagiography in which the most important aspects of Malcolm X’s life are pinpointed, but which provides no truly satisfying narrative arc. It’s a problem consistent with most Hollywood biopics. Spike Lee made a movie about Malcolm X as bloodless as one that could be made by Norman Jewison. And in that, it may truly be transformational.