rNEW 80th ANNIVERSARY YEAR 1913-1993

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essed are the poor in spirit, for:,eirs is the qulek way to heaven.essed are they that live in luxury,

I i;orthey shall be comforted. Blessedare the meek, for they shall see where;~, gets them. Blessed are they that, unger, for they shall be fed with ,, ords. Blessed are the powerful, fort ey shall keep their power. Blessedare the pure in heart, for they shall '

elieve anything. Blessed are the5,: eechmakers, for they shall becalled wonderful. Blessed are theylat are tortured, for they shall gain,: I mility. Blessed is the Church of thePoor, for it shall say nothing of the,. ,lence of the rich.

Roger Woddis

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A saint goesmarching on

Jonathan Romney regretsthat piety ousts pleasure

in Spike Lee's epic

Cinema's uneven relationship with thereal world gets another perverse illus-tration with this week's two majorreleases. One, Spike Lee's Malcolm

X (on general release from 5 March), pledgescomplete engagement with the real, aimingnot just to portray history but, ideally, totransform it. The other, Toys (Odeon, Leices-ter Square, from 5 March), is such a thor-oughgoing retreat into dream frivolity that itcomes across as the cinematic equivalent ofa squeaky teething ring.

Yet, of the adult film and the nappy-phaseone, which is the one to spawn the spin-offbubble-gum? You must have spent the pastyear in solitary not to have come within sniff-ing distance of a Malcolm X potatochip; butI'veyetto see any cute wind-up Robin Wil-liams dolls on sale. .

The comparative lack of hype surroundingToys (in Britain, at least) can only help thefilm, and God knows it needs it. It's rare thata film should. be able to maintain some ele-ment of surprise, of independence, outside allthe mercantile and critical apparatus that sur-rounds it-s-from saturation campaigns push-ing a film's logo, to the way in which you pre-digest its story, its look or its spirit throughcontact with trailers, clips, reviews. Actuallyseeing a film now has the anti-climactic feelof fitting the last piece of a jigsaw into place.

That's rarely been truer than it is of MalcolmX, which stands under a leaden weight ofexorbitant expectation, speculation and pre-diction about its likely effects. the film isfated to stand as a footnote to the advancecommentary, which was a hundredfold morecharged with political actuality than film talkever gets.

Malcolm X will be considered a failure if itisn't the definitive turning point in Americanfilm politics that everyone has predicted (in-cluding its director). And it's bound to seema damp squib by comparison with the incen-diary; despite the radical otherness of its sub-ject matter in relation to the white Hollywoodnorm, it's far closer to Hollywood aestheticsthan expected, especially from the maker ofthe formally radical Do The Right Thing.

What's most interesting, though, is the waythat the 'film is bookended with sequencesthat make claims for its importance not justas a commentary on the political real, but asa part of it. The credit sequence of an Ameri-can flag burning is preceded by the famousfootage ·of the Rodney King beating. Thereare a number of possible messages here~itcould be saying, simply, that nothing has

5 MARCH 1993

"Malcolm X" defeatsitself by opting for anascetic staidness to

match Malcolm'srejection of frivolity

changed since Malcolm X's own martyrdom;or that the film transcends mere celluloid, andis as big and as brutal as current black history;or it could be forecasting for itself as explo-sive an effect as the original King video had.Lee ends with a cameo by Nelson Mandela,effecti vely acting as a celebrity adfor the filmwithin the film itself, as if the movie neededto assert its own historical importance asmuch as its subject's.

This self-regard rather mercifully defusesthe sometimes arid sense of hagiography thatlies between these points. Malcolm X ishagiographic in a literal sense, following theclassic pattern of saintly narrative: from theProdigal Son years (Malcolm's life as hood-lum Detroit Red) through the redemptiveturning point (his introduction to Islam) andassumption of the role of righteous teacher,to his eventual martyrdom (a moment heseems able to predict, as he muses solemnlyon his way to his last stand, accompanied by"A Change Gonna Come" on the soundtrack).

The film's high seriousness is perfectly em-bodied in the second half by Denzel Washing-ton, whose charismatic sobriety transcendsmere photo-imitation of his model. But allthat seriousness, and all the overtly rhetoricalmoments (a remarkable shot of Klansmenriding into a full moon; the Dickensianvignettes of Malcolm's ex-cronies subsidinginto squalor) are eclipsed by the opening, inwhich Lee seems to cram all the directorialhedonism he knows he must curb later. Thefilm starts with swooping shots of a recreated1940s Boston, and deliriously choreographeddance-hall sequences-a world of outrageousCab Calloway zoot suits and hats, swaggeringwalks and radiant grins. In one shot, Lee, asMalcolm's pal Shorty, comes sliding right atthe camera like a BusbyBerkeley chorine, as ifto say, "Enjoy it whileyou can."

The film rather de-feats itself by optinglater for an asceticstaidness to match Mal-colm's own rejection offrivolity; it also turns itsback on an acute cultu-ral archaeology that isLee's forte. At the start,Malcolm gets his hairstraightened with lye, gleefully proclaiming,"Looks white, don't it", before having hisscalp agonisingly singed. This is pure throw-away panto, yet it's a far more astringent playon racial identity and its attendant miscon-ceptions than the later scene in which Mal-colm and his Islamic mentor pore over thedictionary, teasing out the loaded meanings

.of the words "black" and "white". It's thedifference between play and exegesis, and it'sclear throughout that Hollywood wide-screenrhetoric is attuned to one and not the other.Lee notoriously suggested that kids shouldbunk off school to see the film; but that ap-parently frivolous injunction fits the way thatit has been crammed with all the factualityand decorum of a "proper" history lesson.

There's no denying that Malcolm X is im-

5 MARCH 1993

mense1y powerful, or to use a more damningword, compelling-which tends to mean thata film is essentially dull but you don't realiseit at the time. Hamstrung by its own serious-ness and intelligence, Malcolm X standsdiametrically opposed to its nearest genrerelative,lFK.

Oliver Stone's film is truly great because-it's dumb-in all its hyperventilating para-noid idiocy, it can't stop giving you food forthought. But Malcolm X never quite makesyou feel that it's fun to think: it commandsmassive respect, but turns its back too de-liberately on that hedonistic complexity thatalways made Spike Lee America's most chal-lenging and frustrating director. Here, he hassimply become the most frustrating.

Let's not cheer for hedonism too quickly,though. Toys is a terrifying textbook exercisein romper-room idiocy gone wild. This is a

long-cherished projectof Barry Levinson, and Idetect the influence of aHollywood analyst say-ing: "Barry, you shouldmake this film, releasethe child in yourself."It's a sort of live-actionYellow Submarine, a hi-deous blend of absurdistsatire-big bad generaldoes battle withwacky toymakers-with thump-l'oeil Ma-

gritte-pastiche set designs. Toys is reminis-cent of those late 1960s whimsy films thatresulted from otherwise responsible film-makers dropping acid for the first time. RobinWilliams has never been so repellently puck-ish, and to compound the horror, there's evena shameless piece ofMTV product placementsneaked in under the guise of parody.

It's worth noting Toys as a cautionaryexample, because I fear that if Hollywoodloses the instruction manual that explainshow the "fri volity" button works, then ourculture is truly doomed. Sweetness-and-lightsurrealism is an evil and empty-headed thing,and Toys only makes you realise how muchwe need the warped imaginings of genuinebrat-savants like Tim Burton. Where's PeeWee Herman when we need him most?

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