Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Malcolm in the extreme Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 16:10:35 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \HD Malcolm in the extreme \SH THE MOVIE: Spike Lee's banal epic \BY Gary Arnold \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Spike Lee's flair for trendiness always has exceeded his dramatic grasp. This chronic but fascinating disparity reaches epic scale in the biographical saga/testimonial/polemic/fashion statement "Malcolm X." The movie, with Denzel Washington in the title role, makes a fitfully compelling effort to portray a troubled yet charismatic modern black protagonist. Ultimately, it settles for an all-purpose symbol of racial pride, opaque but serviceable as role model or fashion accessory. Mr. Lee campaigned avidly to direct "Malcolm X" when the project was revived two years ago by producer Marvin Worth, who owned the rights to Alex Haley's "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." The director may have brought more professional savvy to promoting "Malcolm X" as his by right of racial justice than he has to clarifying the subject's life and legacy. "Malcolm: The Event" looms far larger than "Malcolm: The Character Study." With his heated oratory on behalf of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became celebrated in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a merciless scourge of white naivete and resentment. The desperate, burnt-out Malcolm, who never escaped self-doubt or sectarian racial politics after breaking with the Black Muslim congregation, remains an obscure figure by the time Mr. Lee's homage exhausts its 200-minute running time. This long-winded shortcoming couldn't be more conventional: "Malcolm X" suffers from a reverential tedium and memory loss shared by doting biopics from Darryl F. Zanuck's "Wilson" through Richard Attenborough's "Gandhi." The latter is a pertinent comparison. "Malcolm X," like its prestigious predecessor, acquires a sanctimonious tone once the imprisoned hero vows to lead a righteous life in conformity with Black Muslim doctrine. Mr. Lee also evokes a profusion of other Oscar-winning or contending epics. The movie opens with a rhetorical downbeat inspired by "Patton": An American flag fills the screen and then gets scorched while Mr. Lee inserts hazy snippets from the video of the Rodney King beating to accompany one of Malcolm's inflammatory speeches. It closes with a testimonial frenzy that includes a personal endorsement from Nelson Mandela and a reprise of the solidarity chorus from "Spartacus." Sustituting Malcolm's name, children echo the "I am Spartacus!" line shouted by members of the defeated slave army. There are overtones of "The Godfather" in the depiction of Malcolm's estrangement from the Muslims and his elderly mentor, Elijah Muhammad, portrayed with uncanny wit and accuracy by Al Freeman Jr. And the most effective phase of "Malcolm X" recalls vintage gangster thrillers such as "The Public Enemy" and "Scarface." In these scenes, Mr. Lee and Mr. Washington appear as jaunty, zoot-suited Boston youths who gravitate toward petty crime. The movie's strongest episodes are anchored by Delroy Lindo's prodigious performance as Archie, a Harlem numbers racketeer who takes the brash teen-age Malcolm under his wing. Mr. Washington and Mr. Lindo establish a mentor-protege bond and rivalry that echoes poignantly later, when Malcolm believes he has discovered a spiritual redeemer in Elijah Muhammad. But the director's fondness for harangues burdens the last two hours of the picture with a plague of speeches and news conferences, deadened by rhetorical monotony and pictorial rigor mortis. Despite the cautious piety that inhibits most of the domestic scenes between Mr. Washington and Angela Bassett as Malcolm's wife, Betty Shabazz, the intimacy is at least a relief from the oratorical excess. The most crucial drawback is that Mr. Lee fails to come to terms with the sense of futility and despair that evidently haunted Malcolm during the year prior to his assassination on Feb. 21, 1965. His reliable oratorical scapegoat, white racism, had little to do with this crisis of faith. What frustrated Malcolm - to the brink of derangement, according to some associates - was the failure to reinvent himself as a spokesman for racial harmony after an eye-opening pilgrimage to Mecca and the subsequent fatal break with the Black Muslims' tenets of separatism. Malcolm does resonate dramatically as an updated prodigal son whose paternal surrogates, Archie and Elijah Muhammad, prove too threatening or disillusioning to justify his attachment. A loss at that level of trust is surely more demoralizing than the kind of abstract deprivation attributed to "the American dream" falling short in the lives of black Americans. Nor does the movie really make a persuasive case for a singular backlog of racial prejudice in Malcolm's past. The most conspicuous white character in his orbit is a thrill-seeking blonde played by Kate Vernon. The hero consorts with her during his young hoodlum phase, and she keeps popping into scenes awkwardly, as if the director and co-screenwriter Arnold Perl cannot decide whether she has outlived her usefulness or not. Mr. Lee is finally as reluctant to confront the ugly, forlorn or pathological sides of his hero as Mr. Attenborough was to confront the fanatic aspects of Gandhi. For now, that fully documented tragic portrait can only be found in written biographies. A movie approximation might have worked better if some lean and hungry newcomer embodied Malcolm. Despite his skill and devotion - not to mention the uncanny physical resemblance he achieves - Mr. Washington now radiates too much glamour to suggest anything but a starstruck glorification of Malcolm X. That may suffice for pop cult appeasement. It fails to take full and decisive advantage of the dramatic challenge posed by Malcolm X in extremis. ***** TWO STARS TITLE: "Malcolm X" RATING: PG-13 (profanity, violence, sexual candor) CREDITS: Directed by Spike Lee; screenplay by Arnold Perl and Spike Lee, based in part on "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" RUNNING TIME: About 200 minutes MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. 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