Malcolm X: Film versus Autobiography

Much like in the autobiography, Lee’s use of narrative over his film “Malcolm X” gives it a very intimate relationship with its audience. The experiences that we see Malcolm going through in the film are all the more meaningful and dramatic because they are being told to the audience from personal experience, as if the audience is hearing his story directly from Malcolm himself. Furthermore, to aid this narrative, many of the scenes in the movie are filmed such that the audience gets the feeling that it is experiencing these things themselves.
For example, when Malcolm, or “Red” as he was called during his years of living on the edge before his imprisonment, goes to jail, the ways in which the bars of the prison and the rooms themselves are shot puts the audience in Malcolm’s place. This is most true in his experience in solitary confinement: When Malcolm claims that he has forgotten his ID number, he is sent to solitary confinement. As he lays there in darkness, the screen goes black such that the audience, too, is in darkness. The only interactions – such as when someone comes to give him water, and also when the priest tries to convince him that God can save him – are the audience’s only interactions, only insights into what is going on around Malcolm.
Lee also uses flashbacks, just like the autobiography does. These flashbacks are mainly used to show the audience the terrifying racism that Malcolm’s father and family faced before he was born. However, overall, these flashbacks serve to depict racism as a whole for what it really is and was in the time these flashbacks occurred. Perhaps the most disturbing yet most effective flashback is the one in which the audience witnesses the murder of Malcolm’s father by the KKK, and then the government’s failure to prosecute his murderers, naming his death a suicide.
Ultimately, the audience learns of the injustice of racism and the violence it produced in the time of Malcolm’s father, an injustice that was so deeply rooted in American culture and society that the government would call what was obviously a murder, given the brutal beating inflicted on the body before death, a suicide. Furthermore, these flashbacks relate the terrible racism that still existed in Malcolm’s generation and his constant exposure to racial violence, drawing a connection between him and his father.
Finally, Lee’s use of historical footage is worth noting. While he does use footage taken of Malcolm himself, he continues to use Denzel Washington in Malcolm’s place in order to maintain the believability and credibility that his other cinematic techniques discussed above built up throughout the film. Namely at the end of the film, Lee uses historical footage alone as a sort of commemoration to Malcolm and a summation of his film and the experiences which he depicted using Denzel Washington.