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.
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