Malcolm X Movie

Over the weekend I watched the movie Malcolm X on YouTube and despite the bad quality, I really enjoyed being shown the life of Malcolm X after finishing the book. It helped me make more sense of the life story of Malcolm X and it made it seem like I was alive and present during his time. When comparing the book and the film and I found that in both presentations of Malcolm Xs life, the story was exactly the same. The movie followed the book pretty well (there were events in the movie that happened at different times than in the book) and even used some of the exact same lines and quotations from the book. Both presentations of the story help portray Malcolm's ideas about how racism affects life, and how Malcolm’s life had an impact on the rest of the world and other individuals. Though both the stories were the same, there were a few additions and modifications to the movie to maybe help make it more entertaining. In the movie, Malcolm X learns about the Muslim religion and Elijah Muhammad through a made up creator named Banes, who was another inmate while in the real story and in the book Malcolm learns of Muslim through Reginald one of his siblings. Another difference was the movie did not show the relationship with his siblings and his love for his mother as the book did. Another difference I noticed was that in the movie, his wife Betty played a greater role, while in the book, she was not spoken of as often. The book also provides us with each of Malcolm's reactions to encounters with white people while the movie did not do it in such great detail. The last thing I want to comment on was how the book helped explained the life of the African American in those times while the movie did not. Even with the differences in the book and the movie, I still feel that both represent Malcolm’s life story with great truth. I enjoyed reading the book and watching the movie equally and I enjoyed learning about his life because I have never studied Malcolm’s life in such detail.