This will be a short diary. A recommendation but also a plea. I just finished watching The Autobiography of Malcolm X directed by Spike Lee. I had been putting it off because I had already seen it twice, when it first came out and again about ten years ago. While I liked it I remembered it as being a bit too long and feeling a distance in watching it. The version I just watched was a director’s cut and an hour longer. I also tend not to watch movies multiple times.
Yet, admittedly a bit disappointed and frustrated by current movies I clicked on. I realized something that I forget to often about great pieces of art — often they must wait their time. A great piece of art is a mixture of the creator’s vision and the time you experience it. The movie was riveting. It was the longest I have spent watching a movie in one sitting in — I don’t know — forever. There were only a few great dramatic scenes, but those were not what kept me watching. It was how I saw the social and political moment through the movie. I know others felt that way about movies such as The Battle of Algiers (I am trying to think of others — maybe in the comments). When I finished I felt like the movie had crept into my soul and pulled my current emotions out with it. It also made me recognize we had been playing on the field the white supremacists, especially but not only MAGA, created for their own purposes.
Watch it if only to hear Alex Haley’s speech at the end.
Now I wonder why it did not win the Academy Award. I guess I know.
WWMD — What would Malcolm do.
