The movie does a compelling job laying out how vulnerable this relationship was, given their faith, given Ali’s ascendency in the nation and the Nation. The other was shot the night of the Miami victory. There are two photos that are especially striking for their abundance of joy: One features Ali with Malcolm, his wife Betty Shabazz, and their little daughters. The movie doesn’t question the sincerity of either man’s fondness for the other. The same songs and yet the white pastor told him to leave.Īlthough White racism is a presence, “Blood Brothers” is most telling in its portrait of a complicated friendship, one that revolved around power and faith. Friend and business manager Gene Kilroy tells of an angry epiphany Ali had upon visiting a white church where the congregants sang the exact same hymns that his Southern Baptist family sang each Sunday.
It also recounts cultural and personal moments - the killing of Emmett Till being one - that led a teen in Louisville, KY, to question white supremacy. “Blood Brothers” recounts the now-familiar events that led Malcolm Little to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X lit fires with a rhetoric and a spiritual vision that had roots in Marcus Garvey’s Pan Africanism and flourished in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. Although Malcolm X was 16 years older, there were similarities. The duo envisioned by “One Night in Miami” were nearing the end of their deep bond when they celebrated Cassius Clay’s victory over Sonny Liston in the 1964 heavyweight title bout. The result is thought-provoking, resonant, often touching. Clarke used Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith’s “Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X” as a touchstone for this documentary - available on Netflix - but also brought his own insights as a Black man in America to the work. It stings, too, with its exploration of two iconic, uncompromising figures who were friends for (the film persuasively argues) too short a spell.
“ Blood Brothers” floats on perceptive interviews, rich archival photos and pointed newsreel footage.
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