I Am Not Your Negro
Crit
"The story of the Negro in America," wrote James Baldwin, "is the story of America. It's not a pretty story." In a scant 93 minutes, from the point of view of one man, director Raoul Peck essays to tell that story, and succeeds as no one should be able to. It helps, of course, to have Baldwin's presence--on the Dick Cavett Show, for example, and addressing Cambridge students--and it helps to have Baldwin's words for so much of the rest of the film that Peck rightly credits him as the screenwriter.
The core of the film is an abandoned project of Baldwin's to write about three iconic murdered friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. The voice delivering Baldwin's words when the author isn't speaking them for himself is a counterintuitive choice, Samuel L. Jackson, but this Sam Jackson is not Quentin Tarantino's Negro: he forgoes the pulpy bombast and dials it down to a soft tone that lets the bitterness of the message penetrate with gentle stealth and explode deep in the gut.
This is the second excellent race documentary nominated for the upcoming Oscars that I've seen (Ava DuNernay's 13th is the other), and I've been told that O.J.: Made in America may be the best of the lot. If that's so, I guess I need to find 8 hours to watch that ESPN product.
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