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Malcolm X
Malcolm X
............ Denzel Washington
Betty Shabazz ........ Angela Bassett
Baines ............... Albert Hall
Elijah Muhammad ...... Al Freeman Jr.
West Indian Archie
... Delroy Lindo
Shorty ............... Spike Lee
Warner Bros. presents a film directed
by Spike Lee. Produced by Marvin Worth and Lee. Written by Arnold Perl and Lee. Based on "The Autobiography of
Malcolm X." Photographed by Ernest Dickerson.
Edited by Barry Alexander Brown. Music by Terence Blanchard.
Running time: 201 minutes. Classified: PG-13 (for a scene of violence, and for
drugs and some language).
"Malcolm X" is one of
those very long, very literal, almost worshipful biographical movies, like
Ghandi. Still, it is fascinating. Director Spike
Lee really knows old Harlem, evidently, and there is lots of dancing,
music, gangster action in the early part. The rest is mainly a study of Malcolm's spiritual development. Fascinating in
itself. I have no sympathy for the Muslim religion, nor do I appreciate Malcolm's talk about white devils; but I really
enjoyed getting to know Malcolm as a person.
He was really a kind of black
conservative: keep the races separate, quit behaving like a victim, quit
begging for handouts; behave morally, work hard, support your
families, defend yourselves if others go after you. That sort of
thinking was pretty wild for the '60s. It still sounds more like
Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and Walter Williams than like Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson
and the more broadly recognized black leadership.
Unfortunately, the black establishment
in the '60s didn't listen to him. If they had, there would not have been
the huge wave of professional welfarism,
divorce, illegitimacy, the nearly total destruction of the black family, that
followed the Great Society legislation. Why do Spike Lee and other
liberals think so highly of Malcolm? Is it simply because he made
whites angry? Malcolm's teaching is nearly the
exact opposite of theirs.
If I were part of an oppressed race,
my response to it, I confess, would be a lot more like Malcolm's
than like Martin Luther King's.
Malcolm also had a big smile and a
great sense of humor. And in the moral area, as one CIA spy says to
another, "compared to King, this guy was a monk!" I am not at
all surprised that he attracted followers as well as enemies.
Carl Ellis, author of Free at Last (Inter-Varsity Press, 1996)
thinks that Malcolm was drawing nearer to Christ when he was killed. Well,
he was disillusioned with some of his Islamic friends, and he was reaching
out to other groups. It would not be surprising, however, if he fell short
of a full profession of Christ. Here is a man who had been treated
very badly by Christians, and in the name of Jesus. Why should
we expect him, humanly speaking, to believe in Jesus' deity?
One would, however, hope for more
objectivity from the filmmakers, who are claiming to present a more or
less accurate picture of the events. The film's attitude toward
Christianity, however, is pure scorn. There are two ministers who are shown with
Malcolm during his jail sentence. One visits him in solitary confinement,
when he is suffering miserably. In an attitude of supreme insensitivity,
we gather, the minister asks Malcolm to sing "What a Friend We Have
in Jesus." Doubtless Malcolm was thinking, "What kind of a
friend would put me in here?" The minister would have been more
helpful if he had offered some answer to that question.
The other minister leads a Bible
study at the prison. Malcolm asks what color God is. The minister replies
(as if he had answered the question many times) that of course God
is white. Now I've known a lot of ministers, some of them rather lacking
in compassion and/or intelligence. But for the life of me I can't imagine
even the worst of them saying something like this. There is simply no
basis for it in anybody's theology (except possibly Mormonism), and
addressed to an audience of black men it is simply too tactless to be
imagined. I have some sympathy for Malcolm's
tendency to demonize whites. I have very little
sympathy for the same tendency in Spike Lee. I'm sure that the episode of
the minister saying "God is white" is a flat-out lie.
We can learn from Malcolm's life, and from his death. Whatever Malcolm hoped to do at the end of his life, it was snuffed out by violence. The Muslim movement had given its people some new ideals and had improved their lives in obvious ways. But instead of eliminating their violence, in the end, the movement only redirected it. Instead of mugging people on the streets, the Muslims destroyed the other Muslims who preferred rival groups. One leaves this movie longing that somewhere someone had introduced these people to an authentic Christianity, one with orthodox biblical doctrine and a quality of life to match.