Page 10 DTH Omnibus
Thursday December 3, 1992
Malcolm X
Denzel Washington, Spike Lee
directed by Spike Lee
Plaza
967-4737
We sent senior Omnibus writer
lan Williams and assistant
Black Ink editor Jacqueline
Charles to see Malcolm X.
(Yeah, he's white, she's black.) Here's
what they came up with:
IW: Do you think that the swirl of
hype and merchandise surrounding this
movie is giving it completely unreal
expectations, or do you think it mat
ters? JC: Oh, I don't think it matters. I
loved it. 1 didn't know what to expect
going in, since there was so much talk
one way or another, but it didn't mat
ter. I thought it was great.
1W: The three hours go by quickly
it was probably just the right length.
JC: Scenes just grab you, even after
they pass. You're still experiencing the
last scene while the next one gets you.
Everything is so charged with emotion.
IW: Probably the hardest thing to
do in a film is portray someone, particu
larly a powerful public figure like
Malcolm X, going through a huge tran
sition in the way he thinks. Especially
without seeming goofy or wishy-washy.
When Malcolm goes from being vehe
mently separatist to feeling a sense of
brotherhood, Spike Lee screenplays it
really well.
JC: It was very realistic. You can't
put someone's entire life into a movie,
even if it is three hours, but the way
Malcolm changes it was well done. It
was mostly through letters to his wife
from Mecca. When he gets back to
America and gives his press confer-
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IAN WILLIAMS &
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ence, you know, his turnaround isn't
some sort of big shock.
IW: I remember in the book itself,
there was a lot more concentration on
Malcolm's youth, like his mother, fa
ther and schooling. That stuff was more
powerful to me than almost anything
else, but Spike Lee concentrates on
everything post-adolescence.
JC: Well, if he concentrated on the
childhood, I mean, anyone could watch
this movie and say, "So he had a bad
childhood who hasn't?" But by con
centrating on his faults as a teenager
and adult, it makes us see Malcolm as a
real person.
IW: I think the reason Malcolm X is
so hard for some whites and even
blacks to deal with is that he was so
hard to pin down. You can't really say
he was a racist and you can't say he was
terribly open-minded when it came to
white folks. The only way to get his
feelings across was to tell his story with
out getting in the way of it, and I think
Spike Lee did that really well. There
were no . . .
JC: Huge gaps.
IW: ... and he never told the audi
ence what to think. I never thought he
abused his power as a filmmaker here,
and he had all kinds of chances. A lot of
his other films have pissed me off just
for that reason.
JC: Well, all of his films have dealt
with social issues, they were sort of
studies, like Jungle Fever and Do the
Right Thing. This was a biography.
IW: Did anything bother you at all
in this movie?
JC: There was this one thing that
sort of confused me. You were talking
transformations and transitions, and I
thought that the man in prison who
taught Malcolm the ways of Elijah
Mohammed was good, but . . .
IW: What was his name?
JC: I think it was Baines or some
thing. In the book, it's Reginald. Any
way, I wished his character had been
more consistent, because he appeared
out of nowhere at the end. Only this
time he was mostly a bad character I
wish I had some type of indication where
he had been all that time.
IW: The prison sequences were so
good that I was a little startled by the
apparition of Elijah Mohammed in
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Malcolm's prison cell. That hologram
totally reminded me of those scenes in
Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi comes
back to dole out advice. "Turn off the
computer Malcolm. Use the force ..."
JC: Yeah, although the voice-over
during scenes like that saves them, puts
them into petspective.
IW: The movie has a good sense of
humor in places.
JC: Another thing that might be a
problem were those scenes that have
that "Spike Lee signature" like
Malcolm's face turning upside down,
and people walking down streets with
out looking like their legs are moving.
IW: He did that in Jungle Fever too.
JC: You get so engrossed in the movie
that these things jerk you out into real
ity. IW: I'm torn between thinking that
those "signatures" are self-indulgent
Spike Lee-isms that get in the way of
the movie, or else they are simply the
cinematic spice that makes the whole
movie different and cool. By the time
Spike Lee starts messing with the cam
era here, though, Malcolm X has al
ready become obsessed with his own
death, getting kind of paranoid and
OMNIBUS
Because when you
say, "Cow ya
doin'?" we won't
say, "How ya
doin'?"
U
Spike Lee: Guess his favorite letter
psychotic. I guess if your main character
is getting psychotic, the filmmaker gets
to as well.
JC: One thing I was impressed with
was Denzel Washington. He is such an
amazing actor.
IW: I mean, he was almost indistin
guishable from the real thing. It would
take me an hour to explain how forceful
and subtle he was.
JC: The scene with Betty Shabazz,
Malcolm's wife, when they have their
first fight, when the reality of the situ
ation starts to crash down around them,
it was fantastic. Also when Malcolm is
about to be converted to Islam in prison,
it happens so gradually. Malcolm
doesn't automatically kneel, he waits
it's not like ... boom! Welcome to
Islam!
IW: That's the most impressive part
of this movie it has real restraint.
This movie will be put on the table next
to JFK, which was the white man's
three-hour version of his cultutal icon
assassinated in the '60s. And Malcolm X
is less judgmental, less maddening and
totally less manipulative than JFK.
JC: As a black person, it got me
redefining myself. It won't alienate any
black people, it uses more of the "Pan
African" idea of people like W.E.B.
DuBois. The struggle isn't about blacks
just in America, it's about blacks all
over the world. Mandela's speech at the
ma
wait for the video
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take your sitter, too
DEBBIE STENGEL photo
end showed that so well.
I W: What about white people ? A lot
of my friends had that hang-their-head-in-shame
thing going when they got
out of the Plaza theater. Is that a good
thing or bad thing?
JC: I'm in no position really to say.
This movie is about defining your role
in the whole problem of racism, and
having an opinion. I mean, everybody
should go see this movie, because
whether you're black or white or what
ever, you're going to come out feeling
different than when you came in. You
will have some sort of emotion, and
whether it's anger, pride, or shame, any
emotion that you have ...
IW: At least it's something.
JC: ... at least it's something.
---nnr I) i i n i i n 'J
figure! Indicate total grass
1. Home Alone 2
$74.2 miliion, 2 weeks
2. Aladdin
W:: $25.8 million, 3 mks
3. The Bodyguard
$24.4 million, 1week
4. Bram Stoker's Dracula
v ::' ; $70, 1 million, 3 mks
5. Malcolm X
; ; ;: $26,9 million, 2 weeks
6. Passenger 57
t:3- $33.2 million, 4 mkSfCWM
7. A River Runs Through It
$28.3 million, 8 weeks .M:iM0
8. Under Siege
:M&.$72A million, 8 weekSXiSB
9. The Last of the Mohicans
$67.9 million, 10 weeks
ID. The Mighty Ducks
W.$44Amillpi9yiMfMi