“I am Not Your Negro”

On Wednesday of last week I went to a film titled, “I am Not Your Negro.” The name implies exactly what you think it would be about. A documentary about African Americans and their hardships through racism in the 1920’s and upward. James Baldwin is the “main” narrator with his archived footage sprinkled throughout the film. Samuel L. Jackson is oddly enough the actual narrator, I only say “oddly enough” because I don’t see him as a narrator but more of an action star/comedic relief.

The film itself was quite odd in my opinion. The entire film was structured where Samuel L. Jackson was the narrator over various clips of African American hardships or success stories or speeches etc. For that reason I think that’s where they lost the audience. I’m not talking about the subject by any means, I’m talking about how each clip changed every five seconds and how the narrator just kept talking over each of them. For me that’s lazy screenwriting. No offense to the director at all. Throughout the film my interest peaked, but it also lost me at various points, and I think that’s because of the structure of the film. If the clips had any structure to them then maybe I would feel different but to me it was just a bunch of random clips strung together under narration to show how hard it was for African Americans. I know I’ve pushed this “clip” thing a little too much but I really think that this was the only mistake on the director’s part. The narration on the other hand didn’t really flow well with the scenes either. The narrator did describe the scenes when they were being put on screen but it didn’t seem like that was the focus of the narration if that makes sense at all.

Yes the film is a documentary, I understand that, but that doesn’t warrant an endless array of narration. Do I like documentaries, no not really. Not to say I don’t like learning, I just not a fan on how all of them are structured out. Maybe I’m spoiled who knows. “I am Not Your Negro” is a great film with what seems like an ever recurring topic but in the end loses its appeal due to a hard to follow narrative.