Malcolm X
Who controls the present now?
I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up my teachers seemed to have misplaced the history lesson on Malcolm X. Maybe this is because I made the mistake of being a kid in Indiana, where the war on thinking rages on. America at large tends to erase history that doesn’t fit neatly into our religiose* and capitalistic ways. All this is to say, and to take a queue from Joe Rogan: why doesn’t the government want us to know about Malcolm X? Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) aims to correct the record. Possibly Lee’s best film, if you don’t count Do the Right Thing (1989), then it’s definitely Lee’s best. From the zoot suits and lindy hops of Malcolm Little’s early days to the firebrand sermons of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Lee maps out a man’s evolution against the brutal machinery of American racism—offering something rare in biographical films: a portrait that lets contradictions breathe.
Denzel Washington inhabits X in a way that surprised me. Washington’s mastery of his own self made watching him dial his performance into “someone else” feel like I was watching him for the first time. Washington nails the speeches, sure, but it’s in the quiet moments where the performance deepens: In one scene, Malcolm, pauses after an insult, weighing whether to react; it’s in these moments that Lee gives us our best insight into how X’s mind works. In another scene, Malcolm, post-Mecca pilgrimage, we can see clearly that he softens his rhetoric but not his resolve. There’s a beautiful evolution and elasticity of thought in Malcolm’s journey that make the final moments, even for those who know their history, feel shockingly tragic. Or perhaps if you know your history, it’s not shocking. Either way, you will feel that the loss of Malcolm X and the loss of any voice today that follows in his path and stands up against injustice is a crime.
To my earlier point on America’s reluctance to remember Malcolm X: Malcolm X was considered too “radical” for a mainstream American film. Warner Bros. balked at the budget, so Spike Lee called up Black public figures—Bill Cosby, Oprah, Magic Johnson—to help bankroll it. Even the marketing felt like a protest: those stark X hats, a single letter loaded with meaning. In a landscape where most civil rights films sand down edges (The Help (2011), anyone?), Malcolm X stands tall, unflinching. Lee weaves in archival footage, deepening the resonance. The film ends not just with Malcolm’s death but with his legacy—kids in classrooms, Nelson Mandela reading his words. It’s a handoff, a reminder that the fight didn’t end in 1965.
There’s generosity in the filmmaking. Lee gives space to every phase of Malcolm’s life: the hustler, the prisoner, the minister, the human being still evolving. He refuses to make him a saint or a villain—just a man, complex and essential. Malcolm X gives us insight in how to oppose seemingly insurmountable power. How to try, in the face of the hatred of the times, to do the right thing.
Malcolm X
Written by Arnold Perl and Spike Lee; Directed by Spike Lee
1992
202 minutes
English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Streaming on Max
You’ll like this if you like: Selma (2014), Do the Right Thing (1989), The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
*false religiosity