by Jo Rempel, Staff Writer

1990 saw the release of Mo Better Blues, the first of four collaborations between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington. Washington stars as Bleek Gilliam, a jazz trumpetist/bandleader with two women in his life and an ego that needs checking. The performance is a snarky one: Washington makes you fall for his charms while anticipating the catharsis that will accompany someone finally punching his lights out.

The fateful back-alley tussle, which happens to take his chops out, leaves Bleek emasculated before his bandmate/rival, Shadow Henderson (Wesley Snipes). Flash forward to what would be a spirited comeback and Bleek barely has three notes in him. Torn between music and romance, he’s finally forced out of the deadlock. So we end off with a montage scrapbooking its way through Bleek and Indigo’s (Joie Lee) life together, from marriage to parenthood. This wasn’t so cynical a movie after all. Those aware that Washington is playing an analogue of musician/composer Bill Lee, Spike’s father, might have been able to see this coming.

It’s not that the ending is tacked on; seeing young son mirrors the opening, which show Bleek’s own childhood. But it does reframe everything in between, as a super-father origin story.

The musician’s ego and vulnerability are essential to his paternal spirit. As we see the Gilliam family apartment from the outside, it becomes evident that we’re talking about the paternal spirit: an extension Lee’s stagecraft, in collaboration with cinematographer Ernest Dickerson and set designer Wynn Thomas, places and continues to place New York as the spiritual centre of the world. Black paternal responsibility recurs throughout Lee’s filmography, with this being the most idyllic portrayal. There’s something in Washington—just in his smile alone—that could sell the Bedstuy pastoral.

Casting him as father of us all, Mo Better Blues’ ending serves as a proof of concept for Washington taking on the titular lead in Malcolm X. The 1992 biopic’s last three minutes use Ossie Davis’ funeral address to transition into the modern day, where children in classrooms around the world declare, “I am Malcolm X”.

How about “I am Denzel Washington?” The presence of a movie star is there to rake in money; he is also around as a site of projection. The stars are untouchable, yet relatable. We project to escape—perhaps to dissociate, but it is an essential human mechanism. Believing in an impossible relation can help us discover who we are, who we want to be.

The way Malcolm X handles its subject’s teenage years is a bit of a joke. Malcolm Little, AKA “Red”, lost in the streets of Detroit, then New York, is 38 years old. He is unmistakably Denzel. Four decades as a bona fide star have made the cadence of one word an instant tell. We’re used to age-inaccurate casting as a necessary, if immersion-breaking, choice, made for the sake of a reliable performance. The way Malcolm X exaggerates the gap has a clearer textual intent: Malcolm’s autobiography’s retrospective can be adapted without the need for a narrative device like a court deposition or an interview with Alex Haley decades in the future. The camera can capture the glamour of the time, while Washington’s manner can convey Malcolm’s fundamental incompleteness.

Washington is a performer playing a master orator by the midpoint; even before then, the politically naïve Malcolm knows well enough that he has to perform to survive. It just happens that the performance is so false that it’s pained.

The process of “corking” Black hair with a lye solution so to slick it back straight is one among many attempts to bend the body towards ersatz whiteness. Pivoting your hat’s extra-wide brim this way and that, strutting downtown in your zoot suit like it’s a parade.

When you don’t know what’s going on, just smile; play it cool. Right up to when he’s lecturing for Elijah Muhammed and witnesses a man trying to speak out against the Nation of Islam leader’s sexual misconduct carried down the stairs by a fleet of devotees: “He’s just hungry for knowledge, that’s all. Yeah, that brother’s starving. So am I. Let’s get something to eat.” Converting drama into banter dispels the tension. It’s also Malcolm’s (and any star’s) way of blindly reasserting autonomy, showing that there’s still some wiggle room within the script.

There’s a scene shortly before Malcolm moves to New York which evinces a sharp turn from the man who still plays cops and robbers with Shorty (the director as another politically blind “Mookie” type) in the park. He’s lying in bed, receiving breakfast from Sophie (Kate Vernon), his white girlfriend. The room gold-soaked, though his face is almost entirely covered with shadow. He demands she feed him while he remains stoic and sedentary. The honeymoon is over—Malcolm knows too much already, or is willing to play someone who does. “So when you gonna holler rap, sister? [...] You would, if the time came.” Nevertheless, they stick together until prison forces the inevitable breakup. She likes danger and he likes power.

Mo Better Blues also happens to include Spike Lee’s first use of the “double dolly” shot, the first of three “double Denzel dollies”. We pan around a circle in Bleek’s apartment as he starts his daily two-hour practise session with some trumpet etudes. The hero is in his headspace: this is what maintaining unity between viewer, camera, and subject conveys.

Malcolm X’s is far more iconic: Washington gliding down the street as Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” plays. He’s on his way to the speech during which he’ll be assassinated: Lee conceived of the shot after Betty Shabazz told him Malcolm knew he would die that day. The film is more about Malcolm as an icon than a thinker, so the climactic moment has him think about being an icon. Such thoughts might only need to be on the minds of a select few. But consider this: “Am I truly myself right now? How will I see this moment looking back from ten years on?” The promise of the double dolly is that some moments are “locked in.” Our Father will always look down on us from above, whether from an apartment or the silver screen.