February 10: I Am Not Your Negro (2016 – Raoul Peck)

★★★

Raoul Peck has a great idea for I Am Not Your Negro.  He takes a largely unfinished, late manuscript by James Baldwin, Remember This House, and uses it to structure the film.  To flesh out the structure, he uses Baldwin’s own language from writings and TV appearances, having Samuel Jackson read from Baldwin’s works.  The film is therefore Baldwin’s ideas and Baldwin’s expression.  I Am Not Your Negro also shows how relevant many of Baldwin’s concerns are even today.  To Baldwin’s comments on the violence and fear that an African -American faces, Peck intercuts images of racial violence from the 60s with contemporary images of similar violence.  And Peck dwells on Baldwin’s analysis of the role of American cinema in creating black stereotypes.  “Because Uncle Tom refuses to take vengeance in his own hands,” we hear Jackson read, “he was not a hero for me.  Heroes, as far as I could see, were white, and not merely because of the movies but because of the land in which I lived, of which movies were simply a reflection.”  The film clips Peck shows us of the portrayals of African Americans are compelling.

But the problems in I Am Not Your Negro are already present in this initial conception.  Peck adopts a chronological structure here based on Baldwin’s intention to progressively discuss the assassinations of Medgar Evans, Malcolm X and then Martin Luther King in his manuscript.  In the film, however, this chronological structure leaves us with a choppy discussion of Baldwin’s ideas.  We get one idea, then another idea, and then another idea, but the chronological structure doesn’t give the filmmaker the opportunity to draw Baldwin's ideas into a cohesive pattern.  The viewer finishes the film understanding several of Baldwin’s notions but not having a sense of his vision.  And Peck doesn’t go into depth on some of Baldwin’s most incisive ideas, like the destructive nature of whites’ construct of African-Americans.

Another problem that starts from Peck’s earliest decisions is his exclusive use of Baldwin’s writings.  Baldwin was an elegant, articulate writer, and his sentences are filled with parallels, qualifiers and extensive digressive phrases.  The language is beautiful and powerful to read, but it does not communicate well in speech.  Jackson delivers Baldwin’s sentences as clearly as they could be read, but the language doesn’t work well in a film that has viewers simultaneously trying to understand the complex sentences, put together Baldwin’s thoughts and integrate the film’s images to the words.  We lose a great deal because of this directorial decision.

A last issue with the film is why Peck decided to suppress the homosexuality of one of America’s most prominent gay authors.  Baldwin was open about his sexual orientation and his Giovanni’s Room is a critically important work in gay fiction, but Peck leaves it to an FBI comment and a very indirect mention later in the film to even hint at Baldwin’s being gay.  That omission diminishes the achievement of the feisty Baldwin, who not only had to deal with racial discrimination but discrimination against homosexuals.   And it puts Peck in the role of creating an identity for Baldwin rather than seeing the man’s own reality, the same gesture that Baldwin condemns whites for doing to blacks. 

I Am Not Your Negro brings to light many of the parts of Baldwin’s incisive analysis and condemnation of race relations in the US.  For that, the film is worthwhile.  In his concept of the film, though, some of Peck’s decisions weaken its effectiveness.  We’re still waiting for a film that can successfully communicate the intelligence, complexity and passion of Baldwin’s thought, but this one is a good enough start in that direction.