Malcolm & Marie

Malcolm & Marie does everything a film wants to do while having as much fun as possible doing it. Written and directed by the creator of HBO’s Euphoria—a show that I have slowly come to love with its most recent episodes produced during the quarantine—Sam Levinson shows his passion and joy of filmmaking through every scene. Whether it is John David Washington furiously eating mac and cheese, or Zendaya toying with a kitchen knife, every moment finds its own way to grab your attention and laugh in excitement as you watch these two characters emotionally tear each other apart.

This will be the most ironic review I have ever written, because one of the core conflicts of John David Washington’s character is the pending review of his newest film, which he reads when it is published halfway through the film. In my own review, I kind of wanted to talk about race and gender and how those themes permeate through the fights the two characters have as they struggle to find reasons why they are in a relationship together… but that is what the review in the film is saying, and they tear each sentence apart for how shallow and white-centered it is to tunnel-vision a black artist’s work under a political telescope. BUT ALSO, this new theme sticks out like a sore thumb because the writer-director of this film is also white. There have been a lot of negative reviews claiming that he is channeling his ideas about race with black characters like a weird puppet master. Do I agree with these reviews? Not at all, but I do find it strange how focused Sam Levinson is on African American artists and culture with his projects, especially in his continuing relation with Zendaya. I hope he gives her as much freedom she says he does, because she has flourished on top of his screenplays. The characters he writes for her feel raw and untameable with a twinkle of fear that they will be left behind. She is my favorite rising-actress because of Sam Levinson, but is that a bad thing? Should he be allowed to pretend being a part of this community while also spreading prestigious and artistic products of entertainment about them? Honestly, the only way to wrap my head around this film, a product of entertainment, is to look where the camera wants me to look.

I do think themes of race and gender purposefully exist in this film, especially when you look at the previous projects both Zendaya and John David Washington have done—Euphoria and BlacKkKlansman respectively—but for me personally, it seems like it is only the face-value concept of this film. If there is any deeper concept to be gained from watching Malcolm & Marie, it is that making a film and working with so many people to succeed in its completion should be the greatest experience an artist witnesses.

The craft wears its influences on its sleeve: shot on black-and-white Kodak film, set in a glass-wall mansion out in the middle of nowhere, where two characters are stuck shouting at each other for the course of a night. It really feels like the historical films it emulates. Half the dialogue is about the history and purpose of filmmaking, and the other half is about how a single film cannot be made by a single person. It is a conversation of film happening during a film… on actual film strips, made during a time where filmmaking was heavily shut down as the world locked itself into social isolation. The catharsis of seeing people openly hate another human being without flinching is mind numbing. Netflix knew people needing something like Malcolm & Marie to get all the stress and hate off their chest. For me, it definitely worked.

Overall, I do not expect this film to win any awards, but I think Zendaya and John David Washington definitely deserve best performances. Sam Levinson is slowly growing in the spotlight, and I am excited to see where he goes from here—especially on what subjects he will attempt to focus on. The cinematography flourishes in the black and white, allowing the beautiful camerawork to flow with the wind and anchor on individual moments for the perfect reveals. The chemistry of the actors is electric, and the use of space in the house gives the claustrophobia a sense of greater scale beyond any other set I have seen this year.

In comparison to Tenet, a 2 hour 30 min film, Malcolm & Marie shrinks in cumulation with such few scenes to score. Not only was Malcolm & Marie just above a 100 minute runtime, but it also drew out its scenes to build up for a more emotional punch. Less scenes with longer time committed to each one leaves quite an insignificant line on this graph—which is why I always have 3 ways of reading the data, so this shortcoming does not kill the review.

The grand average score calculated from the 37 scenes:

81.1%