A very good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it seemed to have a decent reputation, I thought I might as well check it out. First of all, to be honest, I have to confess that, even though I did hear about James Baldwin before, very little though, I had no knowledge of his work whatsoever. Anyway, what I eventually saw in this movie really hit me like a truck after all. Indeed, Baldwin is probably one of the most articulate human beings I have ever seen and his words of wisdom were just so profound, I was really quite blown away. I’m not sure if the link with his unfinished book ‘Remember This House’ did really work though. I mean, to hear his recollection of his relationships with Medgar Evers (another guy I had never heard of before watching this movie), Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr was really interesting but, unfortunately, this aspect didn’t feel fully developed which is understandable since he didn’t get really far with this book before he passed away. What really worked so well was the addition of modern footage of riots and police repression showing how little has changed after all. I wonder what Baldwin would make of it, our current massive polarization with the influence of social media on the masses, and if we did make any progress according to him. Eventually, the point of views have become quite extreme, with people still dividing everyone in specific boxes and other people completely rejecting such labels and all of them hardly managing to cohabit together. I have to admit that I did feel quite some shame watching it and I’m not even American. I felt shame not exactly because I’m White but above all because of the appalling way we, as humans, treat each other. I was also intrigued by the fact that Baldwin was a civil rights activist but he was also gay, something which was never tackled in this movie. Of course, you might argue that it wasn’t the topic of this documentary but I wonder what this great man had to say about this subject and what he thought about the way gay people were treated back then. Anyway, to conclude, I thought the damned thing was fascinating and quite emotional, much more than what I could have expected and it is definitely worth a look.