Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin, Dick Cavett
Storyline
Writer James Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America with his unfinished novel, Remember This House.
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson -
Narration
(voice)
James Baldwin -
Himself
(archive footage)
Dick Cavett -
Himself
(archive footage)
Taglines:
In "Remember This House" Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished -a radical narration about race in America, through the lives and assassinations of three of his friends: Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. using only the writer's original words.
Country: France, USA
Language: English
Release Date: 3 Jan 2016
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
The word "negro" is used 78 times in the film. See more »
User Review
Author:
Rating: 9/10
There are so many ways to feel and experience and comment on this film.
AS A WRITER: For lovers of language, phrasing, and meaning, hearing
James Baldwin's writings and seeing him speak is enough to spark the
highest praise alone. His capacity for observational conclusion and his
use of language to transmit these conclusions is extraordinary. In
this, he is one of the finest chroniclers of the American condition,
not just one of the finest African American chroniclers. If you don't
believe that going into this movie, you will when you come out of it.
Spending close to two hours listening to the man's work is an utterly
intoxicating experience. In this regard the film is extraordinary.
AS A FILM LOVER: We know that James Baldwin was a cinephile and one of
the great film critics in American history. He wrote extensively about
cinema and a large part of this film consists of clips from Hollywood's
rough history of reducing or falsifying the black American experience,
often with Baldwin's own criticisms laid on top of them, weighing the
clips down, eviscerating them. There are hard juxtapositions here as
well, such as the innocence of Doris Day pressed up against the reality
of lynched black men and women swaying in trees. By contextualizing
these images in new and fresh ways the film is able to paint an
impressionistic portrait of American denial. And despite a small
handful of shots that don't entirely synergistically ring with the
Baldwin text (I'm thinking of a few clips – by no means all - that the
filmmaker himself shot), there are enough times when the words being
spoken and the images being shown are so surprising and spot on as to
be true, high, art. In this regard, the film is extraordinary.
AS A HUMAN BEING: The greatest moral failing of this nation is not its
imperialism, not its militarism, not its materialism or escapism or
consumerism, – though the film makes a strong case that all these
things are tangled together – America's greatest moral failing is its
racism. And the scalpel procession with which this movie uses Baldwin's
words and character to autopsy this vast cultural sin is inspiring.
Baldwin himself was never a racist, though God knows, I wouldn't blame
him if he had been. Baldwin was never a classist or a nationalist or a
demagogue of any sort. Baldwin was a man. He demanded that he be
perceived as a man and that black America be perceived as people, with
all the dignity and rights that affords. He looked America in the eye
and asked a simple question, why do you NEED to dehumanize me? And he
followed the question up with a statement, as long as you dehumanize
me, America can never succeed. It was not a threat. It was another of
his observational truths, the idea that our racism undoes us, keeps us
from being great. In the way "I'm Not Your Negro" illuminates Baldwin's
call for a higher humanist agenda, the film is extraordinary.
AS AN ACTIVIST: The film implies that the most horrifying thing you can
do to a movement is to kill its leaders. Not just because you deny
dignity and rights to the people who look to those leaders for hope,
but you also impact the movement for generations. The natural order of
generational transition, that a great leader will grow old, evolve,
change, and teach the next generation how to lead, is violently
interrupted. What we are left with is the idea that there is nothing
Malcolm X or Martin Luther King could have done to keep from being
killed except to be silent – not an option for either, nor for Baldwin.
X was killed even as he was becoming less militant, less radical,
reversing against the idea of "the white devil". This "evolution" did
not save him. King was killed even as he was becoming more radicalized,
more desperate, slowly walking back the rule of love for the rule of
forced respect. This "evolution" did not save him. There was nothing
the White America that killed them wanted from them but silence in the
face of dehumanization. And in its subtle, artistic, nuanced way, this
film is about all of that. But it also ties itself to the moment.
Images of Ferguson, photographs of unarmed black children left dead in
the streets by police, video of Rodney King being brutalized beyond any
justification, all of it means that Baldwin's words ring timeless, his
call to action not remotely diffused by our distance from him and his
time. In this regard, the film is extraordinary.
AS A LOVER OF PEOPLE: Baldwin is by no means a traditionally handsome
man, but he is a striking one. His charisma is nuclear and his face is
always animated. When he speaks, the depth and warmth of the content
play across his features. His eyebrows lift all the way to the middle
of his forehead when he pauses to gather his considerable intellect for
attack. His eyes turn down and to the right when he knows he's
eviscerating an illegitimate institution. He punctuates an observation
with a smile so genuine and wide that it emits its own light. To watch
him command a talk show or a lecture is cinema enough. In that it gives
us the gift of watching Baldwin speak – among so many other things -
the film is extraordinary.
I guess I have some small aesthetic qualms with the way the film is put
together, but to what end? These are my own little opinions about the
tiniest minutia of filmmaking. Personal hang- ups on a certain cut here
or there, useless criticisms on a work that succeeds so profoundly in
all the most valuable and important ways.
The film is extraordinary, important, and genuine in any and every way
that matters, and that's all there is to it.
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