Power to the People

For years and years, the Black Panthers’ name has been used as a rallying cry, a sign of defiance or a punch line. Whatever your feelings about the group, you probably have a completely different view from your friends and neighbors.

Black Panthers: Vanguards of the Revolution aims to tell a more unified Black Panther story, whether many former members are on the same page about the movement’s ideals or not. Even when Stanley Nelson’s documentary leans toward hagiography—and that happens a lot—that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’ve all be told so many things about the Black Panthers over the course of our lives, why not get something resembling a singular vision down on film?

I overheard one jerk critic ask why anyone would make Black Panthers: Vanguards of the Revolution, following it up with how are the Panthers relevant in the present? Who can say? Fox News may argue that the Panthers are relevant simply because of the existence, marginal though it is, of the New Black Panther Party.

Here’s what is relevant: According to the documentary, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard and Bobby Seale founded the Panthers to advance the notion that black people deserve good housing, good education and freedom from police brutality. Google #BlackLivesMatter, and you’ll see a lot of the same tenets. (I’m kind of surprised Nelson didn’t make a link between the 1970s and the present; it seems like a missed opportunity to really impugn our political leaders.)

What’s fascinating is archival footage of Newton, Cleaver, Hilliard and Seale as the party’s leaders and spokesmen. It’s easy to see how they were able to galvanize a movement. Each of them speaks with such passion that they’re mesmerizing.

Where Black Panthers: Vanguards of the Revolution succeeds is breaking down the timeline of events and the philosophical differences between the leaders. Newton and Cleaver started on similar paths that later diverged, to the point that Newton expelled Cleaver. And Seale, after the Panthers began splintering, seized a moment to run for mayor of Oakland, Calif., and forced a run-off with incumbent John Reading.

Where the documentary doesn’t do as well is detailing some of the uglier sides of the Panthers’ lives. Cleaver did time for rape, and member Elaine Brown, in a contemporary interview, makes a rueful remark about the men’s version of revolution not leaving a lot of room for women—despite the fact that there were more female Panthers at one point than male. (Brown, a fascinating person, could use a whole documentary herself.)

In short, this is a pretty one-sided affair. But it’s important that someone document the Panthers’ version of events—I grew up hearing the J Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon versions in school (when I heard anything at all), and who needs more nonsense gleaned from those paranoid beacons of American jurisprudence and politics? What Nelson’s movie lacks in balance it makes up for in spirit. It also has down the flavor of the period—the late 1960s and early 1970s—and a dynamite soundtrack to boot. What’s to dislike?

Directed by Stanley Nelson

CCA Cinematheque

NR

115 min.