Four men walk into a room on a night in February 1964, unaware of how their shared – and distinct – legacies will come to define the best half century in American history. That premise presents something that sounds more burdensome, and even more straightforward than “One Night in Miami,” which premiered in Venice and then Toronto last week.
The film is a fictional account tracing the celebratory aftermath of the night Cassius Clay was crowned world boxing champion – with his friends Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown. The celebratory scenario is a mere tipping point for the story’s interest in presenting a philosophical debate among the four men as they interrogate the burdens and the responsibilities of being young, gifted and black in a country that sees them as second-class citizens.
Regina King, who makes her feature directorial debut with “One Night in Miami”, could not have predicted the last six months of global race dynamics, making the film’s discussions particularly apt. But the thematic applicability of “One Night in Miami” only reinforces the almost cyclical nature of the black struggle across generations as America’s anti-blackness manifests itself in successive generations spanning centuries.
In the play of the same name, the entire story was set in a hotel room but Kemp Powers, who adapts his own play for the screen, delays the hotel-meeting. Instead, the film opens with us meeting the four figures individually, each at different stages in their lives: Cassius Clay before he became Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X on the cusp his defection from the Nation of Islam, Jim Brown on the cusp of a career change, and Sam Cooke trying to extend his success as a recording artiste to the mainstream. These opening sequences, by design, must set up the context for these figures in broad strokes – and the context of the world they inhabit.
After Clay’s surprise victory over Sonny Liston, the quartet retreat to a Miami hotel room. X has called the meeting, both to celebrate Clay’s win and his decision to join X as a member of the Nation of Islam. The friendly reunion gives way to conversations that soon move from friendly and conciliatory to complicated and invective. Conversations are the centrepiece here as the men talk with each other, and then at each other. Rather than any traditional plot to speak of, the film observes the clashes of ideology and personalities as the four men examine their lives, their friendship, their careers and their futures. Within a year, two of the men – Cooke and X – would be dead. And it is the clash between those two that is the closest thing to a through-line in the film.
When we first meet Cooke, played by Tony-winner Leslie Odom Jr, who does his own singing, he is trying to win over a white audience with his singing. They are unenthused. It’s a direct link to X’s, and the film’s central argument with Cooke. As the intellectual of the group, Malcom X is established by Powers’ script as the thinker of the group. He recognises the burden these men have on their shoulder as public figures fighting, by necessity, in the struggle for racial equality. The meeting turns combative when he accuses Cooke of betraying his responsibility and making music that comforts the mainstream, rather than using his voice for music that could rouse social change. King shoots a successive series of arguments between the two men with sharpness, probing at the ideas and questions, even as Powers’ script slightly flattens the nuances of the film’s arguments – as if reticent to let the audiences battle with the tough questions it asks. This particular argument between Cooke and X occasionally feels more fruitful as a discussion point than a scene.
It is only natural, though, that the best aspects of “One Night in Miami” are the themes and the potential implications of its arguments. The film, like the play, is working in a specific didactic tone that is deliberately speaking to the moment it depicts and the moment it premieres in. So, it is suitably thoughtful and observant about the historical nature of its event while – impressively –avoiding too much sign-posting to overemphasise the continuing relevance of the questions being asked. King must be credited for this subtlety and the relaxedness which pervades the film. Where the script suggests agitation, King’s direction counters this so that in its strongest moment it resists any Great Man Expostulations and, instead, presents these conversations like men struggling to make sense out of a senseless world.
King directs the quartet with clear-eyed empathy and recognises these historical figures as men, rather than symbols. Powers’ script slightly problematises King’s more languorous tone by favouring Malcolm X – both as a character and as a mouthpiece. But, it helps that Kingsley Ben-Adir meets this challenge and turning in the performance that justifies this. His Malcolm X is offered the film’s most vivid sequences and he deftly navigates the fear, exhaustion, anxiety and passion of a man fighting a revolution that seems unwinnable. Even when forced to articulate the film’s philosophy, he is tender an empathetic. Aldison Hodge and Eli Goree round out the quartet as Brown and Clay. Goree nails the reckless charm of a man on his way to becoming legend and does an excellent job of making Clay’s fascinating with the men around them. Hodge – the least talkative of the four – is given the smallest arc, but communicates paragraphs with his eyes. His countenance becomes a key for the audience.
In a late scene, Brown and X sit together after a blowout as X struggles to explain his ideology. Holding back tears of frustration he tries to explain that black public figures are the best weapons for the case against anti-blackness in America. In reaction, the look on Hodge’s face, one of both sadness and concern, hits home the film’s thematic implications. Black people shouldn’t have to be weapons, he seems to say. Black people should be able to just be. Of course, the reality is that in a world where black skin is politicised, very few have the luxury of being able to just exist. Even though Powers’ script never takes that complicated moment further, it is profound enough in its brevity and feels fittingly emblematic of a film that recognises how a brief moment in time is only part of a lifetime of struggle.
“One Night in Miami” is shrewdly aware of its own metatextual implications – a film by black artists considering the fate of black artists. Its arrival in theatres later this year will not be a moment too soon. It speaks to the moment, even when it does not have all the answers. But it doesn’t need to. Its existence is enough.
“One Night in Miami” is screening at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival as a Gala Presentation.