Black Power: “One Night in Miami” Moves the Needle Forward at the Venice Film Festival

One Night in Miami

(Venice, Italy) One night in Miami, on February 25, 1964, the brash 22-year-old Cassius Clay defeated the World Heavyweight Champion, Sonny Liston. Years later, playwright and screenwriter Kemp Powers would stumble upon a paragraph in Redemption Song - Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties, a book by Mike Marqusee about the intersection of sports and politics. One paragraph mentioned how four Black icons had gathered in a hotel room after the fight: Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Joe Lewis. The four luminaries were friends, and Powers imagined that they had come to support Clay in a fight no one thought he would win.

During the ZOOM press conference, Powers said that he was fascinated by that paragraph because if you had asked him who were the four most inspirational men in his entire life, randomly he would have named those four men. At the time he read the paragraph, he was still a journalist and was planning to write a book about the friendship between the four men. "The subject that I had been researching for many years with the intention of writing as a book, suddenly became ripe for writing this piece of fiction." So he wrote it as a stage play, and then adapted his play into a screenplay.

Regina King is making history as the first Black woman to direct a film selected by the Venice Film Festival. King was asked what it meant to show the film at this pivotal moment in time -- a story set nearly sixty years in the past, but with a theme that is relevant to Black society in America today. King said that the story that was happening for Black Americans sixty years ago is the same story that is happening now. "When we started filming it, did we know we would be in this powder keg moment that we're in right now? Absolutely not. But the conversations were relevant when Kemp wrote the script, when we started filming, and it feels kind of like one of those things where it was meant to be, even though our intention wasn't that it would happen during the time when an uprising, if you will, was going on in our country... Maybe we're lucky and we are going to have the opportunity to be a piece of art out there that moves the needle in the conversation for real transformative change."

One Night in Miami ZOOM press conference - Photo: Cat Bauer

As an American living overseas, it was deeply disturbing to watch as George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin in front of the eyes of the world. The United States exploded just as Italy was gently emerging from the global pandemic. The dichotomy was extreme. So to see a film like One Night in Miami, and watch articulate, intelligent Black men delve deep into the question of race was reassuring, thought-provoking and inspiring. The film is a real opportunity to have an informed debate.

The actor Eli Goree, who plays Cassius Clay, said something that really struck a chord. In the film (as he did in real life) Cassius Clay boasts about how beautiful he is. Goree's mother had seen the movie for the first time the night before. It was the first time she had ever cried when seeing a film that her son was in. Goree's mother had grown up in the 60s, and she was reminded how Cassius Clay was the first Black person who had ever said that he was beautiful. "It affected everything after that. Because other Black people said, well, he's beautiful? Then I must be okay."

All the actors give distinct, powerful performances: Kinglsey Ben-Adir as Malcolm X; ldis Hodge as football superstar Jim Brown; Leslie Odom Jr. as music legend Sam Cooke, and Eli Goree as Cassius Clay the moment he transforms into Muhammad Ali. Read the Variety review by Owen Gleiberman, which eloquently sums up the film:

"Where the film comes together, and holds you as a structured piece of drama, is in the theme that surges throughout it but is given a name only at the end: “Black power.” In 1964, that phrase was just coming into its own, and “One Night in Miami” is set at the paradigm shift of a moment when Black power was a consciousness that emerged, in part, from how figures like these four were rising in the culture, becoming influential stars in it, challenging it and changing it and maybe, in the process, revolutionizing it. Revolution was in the air, yet only Malcolm X had named it that. “One Night in Miami” is a casually entrancing debate about power on the part of those who have won it but are still figuring out what to do with it."

One Night in Miami has been picked up by Amazon Studios, and will be released later this year. Let's hope this time the needle takes a giant leap forward.

Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog