Brother Minister – The Assassination Of Malcolm X

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Documentary: B

 

 

The late, great Roscoe Lee Brown narrates Jack Baxter’s documentary Brother Minister – The Assassination Of Malcolm X (2003) that has been in court battles, the subject of attack and attention for suggesting (helping to prove?) Malcolm X was killed by darker, more corrupt money and power interests in The Nation Of Islam under the guise of Malcolm having “betraying” them.  It was always assumed by many that it was yet another government conspiracy and the alternate possibility suggested here was kept silent for all kinds of reasons.  That had been slowly changing when Spike Lee’s Malcolm X was released in 1992.

 

My problem with that film is that it chose to cover Malcolm’s individuality so much over the history that a certain layer of realism was sabotaged.  When you have Denzel Washington in that role and that hauntingly convincing in it, even an auteur like Lee could get distracted.  The other problem was the constant conflict in Lee’s work defined by the differences you have in his use of both the New York School of filmmaking style colliding with the Black Experience, which are two different things as an associate of mine once pointed out.  Baxter is free of that by abandoning both and doing the one thing Lee should have been doing, giving us more backstory outside of Malcolm.  The result is a very revealing look at the time then and now we have not seen before.

 

Sure, this has the advantage of over 10 years on Lee’s epic, but for the period before that, this work is able to go further about the missed opportunities for progress for African Americans and how Black Separatists may have exploited a situation like the Civil Rights Movement for their own gain that most unforgivably allowed the Republican Reclamation we are seeing today against such rights and progress.  Louis Farrakhan was spouting many terroristic statements all the way to practically claiming at least partial responsibility for Malcolm’s death.  Since that and the events of 9/11/01, we have not heard much from him since.

 

So when all is said and done, though it disturbs the establishment and government, is Black Separatism a success or failure?  If it destroyed a genius like Malcolm as this work indicates, than it has failed those it was supposed to serve.  As a revolution, it just repeats the mistakes of the “white establishment” it criticizes.  As a tool for progress, it marginalizes those involved.  As a way of being, it is great until it implodes.  It is any better than phony assimilation?  Followers will say no, that they would rather suffer any trouble on their own.  There is room for some separatism, but total separatism is just not practical and like Communism before it, is bound to fail.  Malcolm’s greatest legacy (even beyond the great points Lee makes in his film) is that he could change and challenge the system while still retaining enough separatism and sense of Black self that was undeniable, not easy to marginalize and assimilate.

 

That was a threat to both sides and when Malcolm defended JFK after he was killed in a way that was pro-Black and pro-progress, that was just too much for the extremists.  They had to get rid of him.  Brother Minister finishes the portrait Lee began, showing Malcolm as the man who could have finished creating the better future persons like Martin Luther King began.  No matter how successful African Americans are in the arts, commerce and other businesses today, his loss is far from being made up for or caught up to.  In some ways, it never will.  Now on DVD, this work could be the beginning of understanding why.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image throughout is a combination of film and analog NTSC videotape footage that is well edited and plays as well as can be expected, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has moments of mono sound and no real surround information.  That is just fine for this program.  The two extras are interviews, one with Baxter (over 10 minutes) and the other (over 20 minutes) with Abdullah Abdur Razzaq (aka James 67X Warden) that enhances the main feature.  That feature runs 115 minutes.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo