Wednesday, March 7, 2012

AN OUTSTANDING EXAMPLE SO THAT THOSE IN THE DARKNESS CAN SEE THE POWER OF THE LIGHT: A twentieth-anniversary DVD re-release occasions a tribute to Spike Lee's Malcolm X from the AV Club's Noel Murray, and if there's a worse set of Oscar snubs than what Scent of a Woman did to this film, I'm not aware of it.

This film proves the wisdom of the Roger Ebert quote, “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” This is an epic and elegiac work, anchored by a remarkable Denzel Washington performance (even by his own standards). If only for the pilgrimage to Mecca, with images so rarely seen in American film, dayenu. And then we get the "Change is Gonna Come" sequence, and his favorite dolly shot trick just works perfectly in setting Malcolm X as a man at peace with the ending he now foresees.  Oh, do I love this movie.

One other question: Malcolm X caps -- great marketing device, or greatest marketing device in the history of modern film?

11 comments:

  1. Benner11:35 AM

    Why blame scent of a woman? Malcolm X should have had director and picture noms, but the award went to Unforgiven, and Pacino winning is not incorrect. I can see Malcolm X as the better adapted screen play, but I'd have dinged Enchanted April. How did Nicholson not win for A Few Good Men, especially as somehow Baldwin didn't even get a nod for Glengarry Glen Ross? Tough, great year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Disagreed strongly on Pacino, who got the career achievement award instead of an award on the merits of that year's work.

    I have no problem with Hackman's win; they're both great performances, as was Baldwin's -- but Judi Dench hadn't yet broken the "under ten minutes for an Oscar" barrier.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Pathetic Earthling12:05 PM

    It's a fine film, but the Malcolm X hats aren't even the best marketing mechanism for films that came out in 1992.  That, of course, would be the creation of the NHL's Anaheim Mighty Ducks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Benner12:36 PM

    It was a great performance, and even if it wasn't that year's best (Downey, jr. Btw), it was good enough that it wasn't a snub. And as Pacino hadn't won one for some reason, a lifetime award wasn't out of order, as the whole damn system is out of order.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Alex Gordon1:02 PM

    As far as Oscar snubs, it's got to be Dances With Wolves and Costner over Goodfellas and Scorcese. Good lord. And seconded by Forrest Gump over both Pulp Fiction and Shawshank and Zemeckis over Tatantino.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Alan Sepinwall1:55 PM

    Adam, isn't William Holden's wife in Network in that movie for only one scene? And she won the Oscar that year, long before Dame Judi.

    ReplyDelete
  7. No, that's correct. My bad.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Joseph J. Finn4:06 PM

    I'd say any of the nominees over Eternal Sunshine in 2004 has to be in the discussion.

    But yeah, time to see Maolcom X again as I haven't appreciated it in a while.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Carrie7:04 PM

    Um, Gandhi over ET? Ordinary People over Raging Bull? I can go on and on. But won't.

    ReplyDelete
  10. As a set of snubs, though, Pacino over Washington and Scent taking X's slot in the Best Picture and Director races?  Gandhi and Ordinary People aren't *bad* movies in the way Scent is; they just shouldn't have won.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Also, man, did Martin Brest go downhill quick--Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run, Scent of a Woman, then Meet Joe Black and Gigli

    ReplyDelete