A Filmmaker's Review: 'Malcolm X' (1992)

Let me just say this. When I finally did watch this film all the way through, I had been wanting to for many years after only seeing the first half an hour or so a few times. Visually, the film is absolutely stunning, the acting is brilliant and the way it has been filmed coincides with the time in which it took place. On that point, the thing I really like about the film is that in some aspects, certain sections are filmed like news reports from the 50s and 60s with the cameras running after the people they're filming etc. and the various tracking shots on large scale marches.

Let's just go back slightly to the first time I watched the first half an hour of this film, I was about 14 years old. The way I initially found out about this film is because we were studying race relations at school and I happened to look it up whilst doing my homework. I'm not going to lie to you, in my day there wasn't any Netflix or Prime Video. Instead, I had to get the film some other way and then watch it. My computer conked out after half an hour but by then, I was already thoroughly interested in what I had just witnessed. Though it wasn't a lot, it was a very different view of what I had initially thought of Malcolm X.

At school, I wasn't necessarily taught that Malcolm X was someone to look up to. We were taught that he was basically the violent version of Dr. King. Be that as it may, I did some reading around which included finding and watching this film a second time and thoroughly enjoyed it. I also found that out of the two, I could identify with Malcolm X more than Dr. King. I watched it recently all the way through and it was damn brilliant to say the absolute least. It is definitely a classic of modern cinema.

I've loved this film for a long time, but only recently have I had the intelligence and philosophies in my mind to pay real attention to it. For example, one of my favourite scenes in the entire film is the scene in which Malcolm X is let out of prison to go and meet the Islamic Minister, Elijah Mohammad. It is such a calm scene and it really juxtaposes the ruthlessness of Malcolm X later on in the film. It does this in order to show us how he grows as a human being and as an activist. When he rejects Elijah Mohammad later on, he becomes more inclined to adopt the phrase most now associated with him: "by any means necessary." But, in order to get there, we require this moment of calm between jailbird, activist and philosopher.

I would say that Denzel Washington's acting is quite possibly one of the greatest pieces of art I have seen in a very long time but that would be a serious understatement. Washington pulled this difficult, larger than life role off with incredible finesse. There were times when you couldn't tell it was Denzel Washington and you could actually believe that you were just watching Malcolm X himself. Not only were the looks completely similar, but the voice and the act was so incredibly alike that this may have been the highlight of Mr. Washington's career.

To conclude, this movie has great stance in the world of biographical film. There are few that even come remotely close, but maybe Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote is somewhere in the ballpark. This is one of the greatest not only biopics, but one of the greatest films ever made and if you don't believe me—just watch it. It is a fine example of one of the greatest achievements and most difficult achievements of modern cinema—to accurately and finely portray a larger than life solid and intelligent figure with such grandeur but not too much that it looks like a deification of the person. It is just right there in the middle and that's why it completely succeeds in itself and its message of race relations in the fifties and sixties.