Review: Zendaya is great. The rest of âMalcolm & Marie,â not so much
One of the big questions in âMalcolm & Marie,â an attractively photographed shouting match written and directed by Sam Levinson, is whether or not we can divine a filmmakerâs motives from their work. Malcolm, a director himself, insists that we cannot, that our analytical jurisdiction is limited to the visible evidence: the form, the technique, the aesthetics. (Speaking of which: This movie, shot on black-and-white film by Marcell RĂ©v at a gorgeous home in Carmel, is not without its aesthetic pleasures.) A filmmakerâs deeper intentions, Malcolm suggests, are fundamentally off-limits, as are any conclusions we might be tempted to draw from their personal identity, which are likely to generate biased, presumptuous judgments that have more to do with politics than art.
Thatâs an arguable (and arguably irrelevant) point, but it does provide a nifty intellectual smokescreen for Levinson, a filmmaker who likes to poke at politics and play games with the viewerâs expectations. For nearly two hours he grants us a ringside seat to an epic loversâ quarrel between Malcolm (John David Washington) and Marie (Zendaya), who have just returned home after the premiere of Malcolmâs new movie. The barrage isnât relentless; there are breaks for make-up sex, a little Dionne Warwick and a big bowl of mac ânâ cheese. But as the (sometimes literal) knives come out and dueling views about love, cinema, race and gender take center stage, we are invited to continually adjust our sympathies and to ponder which character most closely aligns with Levinsonâs own point of view.
The easy answer would be Malcolm, introduced basking in the afterglow of a warm reception for his latest feature. By this point in his career heâs achieved enough success to generate comparisons to Barry Jenkins and John Singleton â and also to wonder why, as a Black filmmaker, he only gets compared to other Black filmmakers. Marie, an on-and-off actress in her 20s, listens silently for a while before nudging the conversation in a more pointed, uncomfortable direction. Malcolm notably failed to thank her during his speech at his premiere, despite having acknowledged just about everyone else â an oversight that signals more than mere forgetfulness.
What it signals, Marie argues, is his deep, unacknowledged guilt at having consciously taken elements of her own traumatic experience and exploited them for the purposes of his art. Malcolm, for his part, forcefully rejects this accusation and the assumption underlying it. His heroine may have some things in common with Marie â they both struggled with drug addiction and suicidal impulses before getting clean at the age of 20 â but he insists the characterâs true inspirations lie elsewhere. âYouâre so fâ solipsistic,â Malcolm spits at Marie, âthat you see yourself in everything, even things that you had nothing to do with.â
Thatâs a pretty harsh insult in a movie full of them, but Iâm going to risk becoming its target and allow myself my own moment of solipsism. In a way, Levinson hasnât given me much choice. One of his unseen but oft-referenced villains is a Los Angeles Times film critic who panned Malcolmâs previous movie, but who has apparently seen the light, having basically prostrated herself before him after the premiere and marveled at his latest cinematic vision. Before the night is through, said L.A. Times critic will have posted a gushy, flat-footed review â tucked away behind a paywall, in the scriptâs most relatably amusing detail â that declares Malcolmâs movie âa cinematic tour de forceâ and âa genuine masterwork.â
âMalcolm & Marie,â as it happens, is neither. At first glance the charactersâ raised voices and frayed nerves, plus the monochrome palette and the occasional studied jiggle of the camera, seem to evoke the up-close-and-personal immediacy of early John Cassavetes. (The two-hander structure and the single-location setting were partly dictated by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the film was swiftly conceived, shot and edited.) But Levinsonâs screenplay, with its carefully engineered pivots from Defensive Monologue A to Overlong Diatribe B, has none of Cassavetesâ ragged spontaneity. Nor, despite Zendayaâs lip-quivering intensity and Washingtonâs impressive lung power, does their study of a tempestuous relationship approach equivalent depths of searching, searing emotional honesty.
But in the interest of honesty â something that Malcolm and Marie keep demanding of each other, if not always of themselves â I canât deny that it gives me some pleasure, and some pause, to report all this. Am I not falling into a cleverly laid trap by suggesting that Malcolmâs reflexively scornful view of critics â or his all-around insufferableness as a character â might be a reflection of Levinsonâs own views? Isnât it just as fair to wonder if Marie, pushing back against Malcolm at almost every turn, might speak for him as well?
For that matter: Should I feel relieved or slighted that the fictional critic in question, referred to incessantly throughout as âthe white lady from the L.A. Times,â is likely a fictionalized version of someone other than myself? Or should I feel indignant that she might easily be construed as a stand-in for my friend Katie Walsh, who notably panned Levinsonâs 2018 movie, âAssassination Nation,â in a freelance review for the L.A. Times, describing it (accurately) as âa badly bungled attempt at social commentaryâ?
Iâll suspend that last question for now, on the charitable assumption that Levinson couldnât possibly be that petty, even if his dialogue here practically constitutes a textbook on human pettiness. Whether or not he is indulging a thinly veiled, verbally abusive revenge fantasy, he seems to have a great deal to vent about critics in general, much of it rooted in a predictably low opinion of their professional qualifications. And if I am violating Malcolmâs rule about not jumping to conclusions about an artistâs intentions, I must confess that I donât particularly buy Malcolm as a character to begin with, that he strikes me as little more than a very handsome, very loud mouthpiece for someone elseâs tedious, reactionary views about art. Heâs also just so hard to take after a while that it scarcely matters, in the end, whether Levinson agrees with him or not.
Marie is another story, not least because she has clearly been conceived as a rebuke to Malcolmâs expletive-riddled invective. You might not always agree with her every rejoinder, whether sheâs implying that commercial filmmakers are essentially hustlers or insisting that authenticity in art matters as much as aesthetics (a point that she drives home in one hair-raising standout of a scene). But Zendaya, who recently won an Emmy for her performance as a teenage drug addict on Levinsonâs HBO series âEuphoria,â has a way of rendering dialogue irrelevant. She holds a closeup here more skillfully and naturally than her co-star does, and her silence proves far more eloquent than his words.
And those words turn out to be the undoing of âMalcolm & Marie,â not just because there are so many of them, but because they feel like the building blocks of a meta-movie parlor trick, an intellectual exercise that exists for no purpose other than its own justification. The logic seems to be that youâll hear Marieâs reservations about the nudity in Malcolmâs movie and perhaps take less issue with how skimpily attired and leeringly photographed Zendaya is in much of this one. Maybe after listening to Malcolmâs lengthy rant about how dumb it is to interpret art through a political lens, youâll be too exhausted to question the wisdom of a white filmmaker using a Black character to advance that opinion.
Which is not to suggest that Malcolm speaks for his maker alone. At one point he tells Marie, âNone of this sâ is necessary.â The L.A. Times critic agrees.
âMalcolm & Marieâ
Rating: R, for pervasive language and sexual content
Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes
Playing: Starts Jan. 29 in limited release where theaters are open; available Feb. 5 on Netflix
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