Malcolm X ((Very light Spoilers))
I must be brutally honest, I knew the history of Gandhi and Dr. King by heart, but Malcolm slipped through the cracks for me. I wrongly believed the simple myth that Gandhi, Lennon, and Martin Luther King were men of peace and non-violence and that Malcolm X was a man of anger and I chose to follow in the footsteps and study the ways of the other men and not learn much about Malcolm. I believed the fable that he was brutal, racist, and a radical that took the civil rights movement back steps instead of forward.
I was wrong.
I first started to become interested in Malcolm X after watching the Lifetime movie "Betty & Coretta" (reviewed at: http://cinematixyz.livejournal.com/2013/02/06/) recently. My eyes were opened when I discovered that Malcolm was assassinated because he had a changed of heart. Being a devout Muslim and seeing the hypocrisy in the system opened his eyes and they were further opened after he made his pilgrimage to Mecca and discovered that all colours could be his Muslim brothers and that his ways and his preaching in the past had been wrong. He felt America was a major problem and that black and whites could never get together peacefully until all people of colour came together as one first.
This change of heart...this desire to work WITH whites instead of against, this leaning towards a more peaceful way, this denouncement of improper and corrupted brothers of Islam is what got him killed. He was assassinated by his own people. The people he had fought for, helped, preached to, and loved. And in front of his Wife and Four of his SIX young daughters. The other two were twins, still in his Widow, Betty's, womb.
I am not sure how this wonderful film slipped through my life unseen. I love many Spike Lee film's and his talent for time, space, mood, and writing cannot be denied. Yet somehow, I just never thought it pressing to watch. I cannot tell you how ashamed I am to have lumped this beautiful leader into a group of war-mongers and cruel racist radicals that felt an eye for an eye was justified. If you also have such disillusions about Reverend Minister Malcolm, I would advise you to read a book on his life or at least, see this film.
Lee doesn't just jump into the sixties and deep into the mind of this complicated figure. He takes us BACK to Malcolm's childhood where we learn that his mother was so light and fair that she passed for white because HER Mama had been raped by a white man. So she PURPOSEFULLY choose a strong DARK Black Man to give her kids the colouring she didn't have. It was almost worse passing for white because if a white man opened a door for you or tipped his hat for you in the South thinking you were a white woman, there were repercussions for their embarrassment when they discovered she (Malcolm's mother) was NOT white. She wanted no such question for her children. They were going to be black, no doubt in anyone's mind.
Unfortunately, Malcolm's strong dark Reverend of a father was a little too "uppity" for some folks and he was bashed in the back of the head, repeatedly by a hammer before being tied while still ALIVE to a railroad track until the next train came. Being intelligent and having a feeling something "bad" might happen to him, he took out a large life insurance policy on himself so his wife and 5 or 6 children would be set. Yet the white coroner (who was probably a member of the same 'club' that did this to Malcolm's father) ruled the death a suicide instead of a murder. So the white insurance broker, again, probably involved with the same certain paternal order that one needs a sheet, hated, a some matches to join, wouldn't pay out the money since "they didn't pay out on suicides". Malcolm's mother asked/argued "How could a man bash himself repeatedly in the back and the back of his head then tie all four limbs down across a railroad track?!" Still, he said "It's a suicide, so I'm not paying you out."
Being black, broke, widowed and not getting the life insurance they had been putting half of their money in just in case, white 'social workers' came and told Mrs. Little (Malcolm's mother) that she could not and would not keep her children. She begged and the family came forth, each relative saying they would keep a child or two until she could get a job and keep her family together. This was not even listened to and one by one, they took Malcolm and all his siblings and placed them in foster homes that needed free labor or Juvenile Detention for Malcolm who once stole food for his family after his father had been murdered. After all her children had been taken away from her and each other and her husband violently murdered, his Mother went mad and was thrown into the most horrid of horrible loony bins. They weren't the paradises some are now back in the depression.
Spike Lee ingeniously weaves this story with the story of a teenage and twenty something year old Malcolm, who called himself 'Red' and was a trouble maker with his best friend and partner in crime (literally) "Shorty", played with great comic relief by Spike Lee himself. You see all the hardships and brutalities that shaped that mind into what later became a strong, clean, free, and long-term seeing "Malcolm X". It would be too easy to say X, Y, and Z equals the man we know as Malcolm X, but Lee takes his time and shows us a flawed man, a young man with much to learn, a gentle and tender man, an open minded man, and a man that I wish I had known more about earlier. Plus, the casting of Denzel Washington is so SPOT ON, I have a hard time telling them apart in photos sometimes now!!
I am glad this film and I finally crossed paths. I believe that ALL truth is beautiful, even the grotesque. It was difficult to learn the truth of his violent and unnecessary death, but it was worth it to learn about a Beautiful man and his Great Sense of Purpose and Fantastic Presence of Mind.
Peace be with You,
Zuzu