Ali, whose birth name is Cassius Clay, was born in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, a year after Emmett Till was born in Chicago. The trajectory of Malcolm X’s life after the horrific death of his father is well known at this point: He eventually dropped out of school, moved to Harlem to sell drugs, spent some time in prison, and then became interested in the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam.Īli’s youth differed from Malcolm X’s in considerable ways. Garvey urged Black Americans to see themselves as part of a global struggle and encouraged them to lean on their communities rather than on unreliable governments, establishing local economies and infrastructure, for example. The elder Littles were outspoken community leaders and subscribed to Garveyism, the school of thought influenced by the Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey. Malcolm X was born in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, and Blood Brothers, to its credit, refreshingly frames his early years around the impact his parents, Earl and Louise Helen Little, had on his understanding of the world. Through interviews with surviving family members - Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz, Ali’s brother Rahman and daughters Maryum and Hana - Clarke contextualizes their intellectual roots and provides required biographical details about the two men, particularly what led them both to Elijah Muhammad’s teachings.
The documentary, which is based on the book of the same name by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith, starts with an overview of its subjects’ formative years. You want to hear less about how you should feel and see more that makes you feel. You begin to crave different ones, deeper anecdotes, more critical probing here and there. But as the film unfolds, meandering through their respective biographies before, with great speed, chronicling their three-year friendship, the nouns start to ring hollow. At first the words, a testament to the influence and deep meaning of the pair’s connection, sound beautiful. The interviewees in Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali generously use words like “destiny,” “fate” and “prophecy” to describe the friendship between the two iconic civil rights activists at the center of this documentary.
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