Spike Lee didn't invent the floating dolly shot, but he did make it his signature move. It's not just in his repeated use of the technique, but rather in his understanding of its storytelling potential. In Mo' Better Blues, the dolly shot captured Bleek's obsession with his trumpet and how it mirrored the devotion he brought to sex with his two girlfriends. In Clockers, the dolly showed how Strike's lifestyle of selling drugs, running from the cops, and being accused of a murder was destroying him both physically and mentally. In 25th Hour, the dolly captured both Mary's drunken euphoria as a young woman at a party, as well as Jacob's out-of-body experience after abdicating responsibility for a moment. Spike uses the dolly to help him imbue his characters with depth, psychology, and conflict without uttering a word. In other hands, the dolly is often deployed at significant moments, or sometimes at seemingly mundane ones just to add some visual flair. Rarely does a Spike joint use the dolly as the definitive moment of his work. In fact, as far as I can remember there is only one Spike Lee movie in which the entirety of the film builds up to one particular dolly shot.
In the leadup to this sequence in 1992's Malcolm X, starring Denzel Washington, we have watched Malcolm transform from a self-hating, self-destructive hustler and drug addict into the firebrand spokesman for a controversial religion founded on black nationalism, and then transform again into a newly enlightened activist boldly disavowing the group with which he'd made his name and striking out on his own. He's been targeted by the FBI, the CIA, the entire American government, and the Nation of Islam itself, after calling out its leader Elijah Muhammad for his treatment of women within the organization and general hypocrisies. He is outmanned, outgunned, and exhausted. Too many people want him dead, and he knows it. But he has remade himself into a leader of and fighter for black people, for Islam, for his family; to back down now would be cowardice, and God hates a coward. All of that is there on Denzel Washington's face as he rides on the dolly, the powerful yelp of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" blaring on the soundtrack. His eyes glazed from barely sleeping, face hanging, as though he has resigned himself to his destined end and the anxiety of when it will come is the only thing tethering him to the world. In a film full of powerful moments, this one stands alone.
Monday was the 100th anniversary of Malcolm X's birth. His legacy still pervades the public consciousness, though at the time of his death you certainly would not have predicted it. Malcolm's legacy was actively undermined by an American society that had labeled him as nothing more than a white-bashing "black supremacist" at the head of a borderline cult that to this day espouses archaic gender and sex ideology and antisemitic notions of a New World Order. Just about the only people who understood him in his full complexity were the people who knew him directly or read his autobiography. To the broader white society, Malcolm was a fringe figure in the aftermath of his assassination, who, much like the Black Panthers, was certainly too radical to be taught in schools. But he meant a lot to black people, particularly during the Reagan era, as the war on drugs and trickle down economics kept the boot on necks of the black and poor, as Malcolm's message resonated as strongly then as it had in his lifetime. By 1992, when Lee's biopic came out, there was certainly an appetite for a popular reassessment and reassertion of Malcolm's legacy, though there was also a lot of skepticism of it given Hollywood's history.
A film on Malcolm X had been in the works pretty much from the moment of his death in 1965. James Baldwin, who had known the man, worked on a screenplay that tried to paint an empathetic portrait of him over the mythos. The experience was a miserable one for Baldwin. The film never got off the ground. By the early '90s, Warner Bros. hired Norman Jewison to direct the biopic, which lead to a very public outcry, with one of its most public voices being Spike Lee's. Many felt that the movie needed a black director at the helm, and Spike felt that that black director should be him. If nothing else, Spike has always excelled at selling himself as a true black voice in film. Not everyone agreed, most infamously the poet Amiri Baraka, who saw Lee not as the black radical voice that Hollywood claimed him to be, but as just a middle-class kid with clunky racial politics. But when Jewison bowed out, Spike got to make the movie.
It was true that Lee was probably best equipped to tell the story of Malcolm X at that time—not because he was some kind of radical, nor because of his love for Malcolm, but because as both a film student and film professor, he understood the power of images and myth-making on the big screen. He did not do what many might have by focusing on Malcolm X's relatable humanity—that aspect was in the background of Malcolm X. Instead, Lee used the canvas of Hollywood epics like Casablanca, Ben-Hur, Citizen Kane, and Lawrence of Arabia to turn Malcolm's life into legend. Most importantly, he wanted a powerful black man in the Humphrey Bogart or Henry Fonda part. Not everyone loved the movie—there are certainly valid critiques—but it's a big part of why its impact persists to this day.
The other part was Denzel. There is no actor quite like Denzel Washington. Many people equate great acting with method acting, an actor disappearing into the role they've been given. But to me, the difference between a great actor and a movie star is one of gravitational pull. Denzel is not the sort of actor who disappears into a character; rather, he makes you believe that a character is him. In other words, whether you have watched old clips of Malcolm or not, you just believe that he must have been like Denzel Washington. Denzel doesn't look like Malcolm—his skin is darker, he's not as lanky, he doesn't have Malcolm's distinctive gap-toothed smile—but he nevertheless pulled you into believing that he had channeled Malcolm completely.
Nearly every moment of the movie rests on Denzel's shoulders, oftentimes a simple look or lilt in his voice tasked with conveying so much. As a comprehensive biopic, the movie crams nearly 40 years into its three-and-a-half hour runtime. Malcolm changes a lot in those 40 years, at one point being a damaged, self-medicating shark, then a student finding self-esteem and faith through the Nation of Islam, then a champion of the organization who quickly becomes its controversial star, then a man confronted with the hypocrisies of others and whether or not he can live by the tenets he's sworn to uphold, then a man whose pilgrimage to Mecca teaches him the beauty and the global brotherhood of Islam and profoundly alters his worldview. It's a lot to capture, and Denzel takes you on that journey with seeming ease. When you get to the end of the movie, after the Sam Cooke sequence and the assassination that you know is coming, the effect is devastating. Your heart sinks every time.
Spike Lee's film made the successful argument that Malcolm X was one of the most important figures in American history. That he was an example of a civil rights leader and fighter, but also proof of a man's ability to make himself better, to change and to rise above his environment and circumstances. The movie damn near turns him into a superhero, which brings its own issues. Today, Malcolm is as popular as ever; at times it feels like he has been molded into a caricature for certain black people in the way Martin Luther King Jr. has for certain white people. People like the fire and brimstone of his speeches more than their context. Still, what the movie showed is that there's never been a man quite like Malcolm X, and we still feel his significance to this day.
