Malcolm & Marie

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Sam Levinson's "Malcolm & Marie" has two very good actors, some snazzy black-and-white photography and some decent camera work, so what is it about the film that left somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth? Let me first state this: The film is not a bad one - in fact, it's competently made from a technical standpoint and there are moments when the dialogue snaps.

That being said, it's often been noted that the success of a movie is not so much what it's about, but how it's about what it's about. That's one explanation for why "Malcolm & Marie" doesn't exactly work - the how isn't that compelling. There's also a slightly more sinister reason why the film ultimately falls flat that I'll get to in a bit.

The setup is this: Malcolm (John David Washington) is an up-and-coming movie director who has just debuted his latest film about a young drug addict's harrowing journey to cleaning herself up. He has taken his girlfriend, Marie (Zendaya), to the premiere and returned home jubilant, especially after noting the strong reaction from the crowd and a few critics he spoke to after the movie.

But something is amiss upon his return home. Marie seems fussy, and Malcolm is not the type to let sleeping dogs lie. Upon pressing her, he realizes she is angry that he didn't thank her during his speech after the screening, but managed to give shout-outs to literally everyone else. As the night progresses - and the fights pile up - we learn that this mistake is particularly egregious when one considers that Marie believes Malcolm used her own life and struggles for the purpose of his film. Add to the grievances that Marie herself is an actress, and Malcolm didn't consider her for his film, which is based - at least partially - on her own life.

There are a lot of grievances in "Malcolm & Marie" - too many, in fact. This is the type of film in which two characters have a bitter, nasty fight and then seem to make up. But there are multiple segues that allow the fight to continue - which is what it does for the film's hour-and-42-minute running time. Often, it seems that the fighting continues solely for the purpose of padding the movie's running time.

I've never required that movie characters are likable for them to be compelling - hell, look at all the great films about gangsters, murderers and other corrupt individuals. But for them to be compelling, they at least have to be interesting - in this film, Marie is a cypher and Malcolm is somewhat of a gaslighting, self centered narcissist. And neither is that interesting, despite the fact that both of the people portraying them are talented actors.

But the film's biggest - and, by now, most well documented - problem is a centerpiece argument during which Malcolm rails against a positive review he receives in the Los Angeles Times by a white female critic. Malcolm takes issue with the fact that the reviewer notes that his story is about the struggles of Black women in the health care system, and notes on multiple occasions that the film is a political one. Malcolm is angry that, as a Black filmmaker, everything he does is viewed through a political lens. He asks Marie why the reviewer compares him to Spike Lee, but not, say, William Wyler.

This concept is an interesting one - how Black artists are viewed differently than their white counterparts, and how white critics often read into the work of Black filmmakers what they want to see through a lens that they may have assigned themselves. Malcolm does not believe that his work is intrinsically political simply because he's Black, whereas the L.A. Times reviewer has assumed his film is. Again, this idea is one worth being explored.

However, Levinson - the director of "Malcolm & Marie" - is a white man. This alone shouldn't disqualify him from addressing such concepts in film, but there's a backstory. Levinson's previous film, "Assassination Nation," of which I was also not a fan, was given a particularly bad review by Katie Walsh, of - you guessed it - the Los Angeles Times. In her review, she attacked how the film sexualized its female leads - one of whom was a trans actor - and then, at the picture's end, tried to lecture viewers on feminism. She argued it was an example of how you can't eat your cake and have it too.

So, the problem with "Malcolm & Marie" is that Levinson clearly devotes a large section of the film in which his lead, Malcolm, attacks the "white lady from the L.A. Times" over her review of his film, and uses it as a means to vent about an incident from his own life. 

In other words, the director portrays a Black man venting about how he, as a person of color, is misunderstood by critics due to his race as a vehicle so Levinson can rant and rave about how he, a white man, was misunderstood (in his mind) by a critic - and now he wants to whine about it. The way this material is played in the film is very specific, and the overall effect is that it makes the arguments Malcolm is vehemently expounding upon seem insincere (coming from a white writer-director), and merely a means of allowing Levinson to complain about what he sees as past slights. 

"Malcolm & Marie" could have been a better film - it has a strong cast of two and it looks good - but it's ultimately a misfire. Had the director taken a more serious approach to the material - rather than as a passive aggressive airing of grievances - it might have been more compelling.