I Am Not Your Negro
Directed by: Raoul Peck
Written by: James Baldwin and Raoul Peck
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin, Dick Cavett
Documentary - 95 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Feb 2017
Written by: James Baldwin and Raoul Peck
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin, Dick Cavett
Documentary - 95 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Feb 2017
“The story of the Negro in America is the story of America. It is not a pretty story.” These simple and succinct words are from James Baldwin, a civil rights era figure already largely forgotten in mainstream culture. King, Malcolm X, Evers, Carmichael, and Davis are names which continue to resonate during discussions of the most tumultuous times of the civil rights era of the ‘50s and ‘60s. I read “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates last year and the book jacket blurb said, “The new James Baldwin”. I heard the name before, knew the man was a writer, but I did not know what he wrote about or why people called Coates the new Baldwin; then I saw Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro.
James Baldwin was the African American social critic of the 1960s. He went on the Dick Cavett Show in 1968 and visibly shook up the talk show host with his honest analysis of the black man’s place in America and eviscerated ivy league academics brought on to counter his arguments. To tell Baldwin’s story and explain his place in history, director Raoul Peck built a film essay on Baldwin’s unfinished 1979 memoir, Remember This House. It is a recounting of Baldwin’s personal recollections of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. I Am Not Your Negro, expertly narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, is broken up into segments including pieces about each of these civil rights heroes.
James Baldwin was the African American social critic of the 1960s. He went on the Dick Cavett Show in 1968 and visibly shook up the talk show host with his honest analysis of the black man’s place in America and eviscerated ivy league academics brought on to counter his arguments. To tell Baldwin’s story and explain his place in history, director Raoul Peck built a film essay on Baldwin’s unfinished 1979 memoir, Remember This House. It is a recounting of Baldwin’s personal recollections of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. I Am Not Your Negro, expertly narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, is broken up into segments including pieces about each of these civil rights heroes.
Peck presents Baldwin’s words front and center. There are no interviewed talking heads explaining to us that Baldwin meant this or meant that; instead, the audience receives unvarnished words directly from the manuscript and what must be dozens of television interviews. No outside interpretation comes between us and the words; we react to them the same way we would if Baldwin was in the room speaking to us. The vast majority of the audience are exposed to Baldwin’s words and ideas for the first time and it is shocking how many sentences and thoughts are completely fit for today’s contemporary issues as they were in 50 and 60 years ago. Baldwin's legacy connects seamlessly with modern times.
While Baldwin and Jackson speak to us, Peck lingers on current images from Times Square and other notable New York City locales tying the past to where we are now. Even though I Am Not Your Negro is mostly black and white, historical footage and studies a fading past, it is a film for today. All you have to do is turn on the news any day of the week and witness the same struggles, ignorance, and misunderstandings Baldwin spoke out against. I wish we could hear his elegant explanations and diatribes concerning Trayvon, Tamir, and Michael Brown.
I Am Not Your Negro is an intimate experience. Baldwin speaks directly to us and we can’t shy away from his painful subjects nor leave the theater without consequences. There is a section toward the end where Baldwin muses on the thought of the first black President; how timely. Baldwin turns the question around and says it is not a matter of who the first black President will be, but what kind of country will he be President of? Compare and contrast the final week of the Obama presidency with the first week of the Trump presidency and you will see Obama was President of a divided country. There are those who fight against injustice, the vast majority of who either ignore it or are apathetic about it, and the minority currently in charge who are itching to Make America Garbage Again.
History is forgetting James Baldwin. His works and words are not standing the test of time the way Selma, the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycotts, and Muhammad Ali are. That such relevant and needed commentary is little by little disappearing, save for a documentary to dig it up again, is a warning. Peck not only does Baldwin a service by bringing him to our attention again, but he strengthens American discourse as a whole. Look at the end of this film. We watch Doris Day and Gary Cooper, who Baldwin says are the most grotesque versions of innocence which never existed, as Peck shows us lynchings over top of a light, throwaway Doris Day song. While most of America chose to believe in the naiveté of what Doris Day represented and the happy-go-lucky 1950s, some Americans were swinging from trees by their necks with a mob of men standing proud of their handiwork below. A divided country indeed.
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