Did a movie like Malcolm & Marie stand a chance with critics?
The title characters, played by John David Washington and Zendaya, are a director and his girlfriend, who have returned from a promotional screening of his latest movie for a long night of flirting, fighting, and debate over the critical reception of the film. In between the few gentle moments, they argue over everything from the status of their relationship to the validity of movie critics to the White expectations of Black filmmakers to authenticity in art to the male gaze. And since identity and its importance to the creative process is also a frequent topic of conversation, it’s probably relevant to point out that Malcolm & Marie’s writer and director, Sam Levinson, is White.
In short, Malcolm & Marie hits on enough explosive topics—with such a jazzy (sorry, I couldn’t help it) black-and-white brashness—that it nearly guarantees it will anger just about everyone. So why did I kind of like it?
For starters, there are some healthy challenges here for critics to consider. Yes, it’s tempting to bristle at the film’s secondhand depiction of reviewers as hacks, but some of the jabs are fair and many of the questions the movie raises are worth considering. This is especially true when it comes to asking how a White critic, such as myself, should engage with Black art (or even identify something as “Black art,” which is one of Malcolm’s complaints). Though it is far less sophisticated, Malcolm & Marie reminded me of 2020’s The Forty-Year-Old-Version for the way it made me rethink how I respond to and categorize work from Black filmmakers.
Still, too many of the couple’s debates on such topics feel theoretical—talking points in a screenplay, rather than pressing concerns for these two particular human beings. And unfortunately that’s the case even when the items up for discussion become more personal, as Malcolm and Marie dig into the details of their relationship (his failure to thank her in his speech at the screening is the inciting incident). For all their ferocity—and I’ll get to the performances—these alternating monologues feel prescribed by the script rather than natural eruptions. This is partly because Levinson has strangely structured the night, so that a blow-up is followed by a sweet reunion, which is then followed by another blow-up, and so on and so forth. In the end, it feels less like we’ve witnessed a private, painful encounter than a series of predetermined confrontations.
Considering the limited material, what we get from Washington and Zendaya is doubly impressive. There’s not enough in the text for them to form full characters, but wow do they nail individual moments, shifting from tenderness to cruelty to scorn to reluctant introspection (in this way the film comes across as a series of successful auditions). Washington makes Malcolm both entrancing and insufferable, perhaps never more so than during the gloating dance number he performs at the start, reveling in the success of the screening. (If Malcolm is a stand-in for Levinson, there is a fair amount of self-critique here.) And Zendaya displays a sharp sense of humor (I love her bit about Malcolm going on to direct an “Angela Davis biopic, but with Legos”), a trembling vulnerability, and a vicious mean streak that nearly matches Malcolm’s considerable cruelty. (Her sharpest blade: calling his film “mediocre.”) Given a stronger screenplay and a few more years of experience, both seem capable of the sort of character-rich rawness we saw from Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in Marriage Story (and maybe even Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which this also reminded me of in spurts).
Formally, the movie is an easy watch. The black-and-white cinematography is luminous; the modern, open-plan house we spend the entire film in is gorgeous (something the prowling camera never lets you forget). If it’s still a frustrating experience, perhaps that’s because the movie is too much like Malcolm: bold, berating, not always fully aware of how he’s coming across. A conversation with him (and a review of Malcom & Marie) isn’t something you’re going to win. But it’s still worth having (and writing).
