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Selma (Film Review)
Last week I finally had the chance to watch Selma (on dvd). Which retrospectively confirmed to me that the lack of acting and directing nominations back at the Oscars was an outrage, among other things.
Like most movies about real life characters and events who actually pull it off, it doesn't try to narrate the entire saga of a person's life but focuses on one particular event. In this case, while David Oyelowo makes a magnificent Martin Luther King and is undoubtedly the leading man, it's not King: The Biopic as much as it is about a pivotal event in the US Civil Rights movement, and all the better for it. On the audio commentary, director Ava DuVernay at various points says she wanted to both end the reduction of King to the "I had a dream" phrase and show him both as a three dimensional human being and an activist working with other activists, to show how many people contributed and often via fierce debate to the movement (as opposed to the "one heroic leader, lots of spear carriers without personalities" model), and how these included women even though their contributions for a time were belittled even within the Civil Rights movement, because sexism. ("At times you could get the impression Coretta Scott King was the only woman in the Civil Rights movement, and that is so wrong.")
In all this, I'd say she has succeeded, though arguably the women still get the short shrift as most of the scenes profiling Diane Nash and Amelia Boynton Robinson more end up among the cut scenes extras on the dvd. (Otoh Selma resident Annie Lee Cooper trying to become a registered voter and getting sneeringly turned down in the third scene of the movie makes for an incredibly powerful statement of what's at stake - apparantly still or again is, since DuVernay and David Oyelowo say on the audio commentary there are new laws taking back what's been achieved in Selma right now?) (Oh, and re: Annie Lee Cooper, this is where not being an US American comes in hand. I thought the actress was familiar, but it didn't register until the movie was half way through that she was Ophra Winfrey, because the only times I see Ophra Winfrey is as an actress - in The Colour Purple or more recently The Butler -; we don't get her shows here in Germany. So I had no problem seeing her as her character from the start.)
You see strategy debates and disagreements instead of King mapping it all out and everyone nodding agreement. You get presented with an MLK as a compassionate, courageous man; the scene where he talks to the grandfather of the murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson, Carter Lee, hit me especially hard, because it's so difficult to show someone responding to grief without it coming across as trite, and here the circumstances were extra difficult, because of the way the grandson died, murdered by a cop, which has a gruesome current day resonance. And yet both the script and David Oyelowo as an actor pull it off and make King's response real and moving.
At the same time, King isn't presented as a saint. (And Ava DuVernay and her cinematographer resist the temptation Spielberg and his camera man fell into with photographing Lincoln the man against lots of halo like surrounding, might I add.) His response when Malcolm X briefly comes to town is insecure, annoyed and somewhat jealous, not serene. There's a strain in his marriage that's not just due to the work, and the visceral (all the more so because there's no shouting, both parties remain soft-spoken) painful scene where they have it out about his infidelities (which we're never shown, but it is made clear that's not just FBI slander, he does cheat on Coretta) is without any attempt by the narrative to blame his wife or otherwise excuse him. And while he has firm convictions, he doesn't have 20/20 foresight as to how things will work out.
There's also the paradox that for Selma as a getting public awareness event to succeed, they need the local sheriff to be a bigot and a brute. (When trying to persuade members of the local student committee to join forces, King points out that the sheriff in their previous, failed attempt played it right from the sheriff's pov; he kept his cops in line, and had passed out demonstrators carried to the hospital in stretchers. No national attention ensued. So the fact that the Selma authorities are so very hostile is an advantage.) Which you could read as a meta comment on the film as well: there's reason Ava DuVernay picked this one, and not the march to Washington, I assume. It comes with a horrible systematic injustice carried out in a brutal way, and personal courage on the part of the activists on every level.
I would add "making it suspenseful despite knowing the outcome", but while the movie is certainly suspenseful - incredibly so -, knowing the outcome in this particular case is a double-edged sword; yes, voting rights will be protected, but no, casual violence against people of colour by authorities won't become a thing of the past. Which prevents the movie from having that faintly smug "weren't things barbaric back then, and aren't we progressive right now to know better?" aura which some history drama does. On the contrary, it's as much a "J'Accuse" as it is a Rembrance of Things Past.
It also makes clear how ACTIVE peaceful resistance, which in some presentations has gotten the taint of consisting solely of speeches, really is, how much courage it costs, and how much sacrifice. How it was a decision everyone had to make constantly, instead of something once agreed on and then done.
Two background remarks: on the flippant side, I was amused that there were no less than four British actors in key roles of this very American movie - David Oyelowo as MLK, Carmen Edegojo as Coretta Scott King, Tim Roth as Governor Wallace and Tom Wilkinson as LBJ. As far as this foreigner can tell, their US Southern was entirely believable.
And speaking of Johnson, the other background remark: at the time of release, there was a controversy as to whether or not his portrayal was fair. Here are two representative articles: Unfair and Entirely Fair, respectively. What it is is certainly dramatically sound: leaving reform to the authorities will get you patronized and postponed at infinitum, you have to push them into acting.
In conclusion: an excellent film. Am glad I have it available for leisurely rewatch now.
Like most movies about real life characters and events who actually pull it off, it doesn't try to narrate the entire saga of a person's life but focuses on one particular event. In this case, while David Oyelowo makes a magnificent Martin Luther King and is undoubtedly the leading man, it's not King: The Biopic as much as it is about a pivotal event in the US Civil Rights movement, and all the better for it. On the audio commentary, director Ava DuVernay at various points says she wanted to both end the reduction of King to the "I had a dream" phrase and show him both as a three dimensional human being and an activist working with other activists, to show how many people contributed and often via fierce debate to the movement (as opposed to the "one heroic leader, lots of spear carriers without personalities" model), and how these included women even though their contributions for a time were belittled even within the Civil Rights movement, because sexism. ("At times you could get the impression Coretta Scott King was the only woman in the Civil Rights movement, and that is so wrong.")
In all this, I'd say she has succeeded, though arguably the women still get the short shrift as most of the scenes profiling Diane Nash and Amelia Boynton Robinson more end up among the cut scenes extras on the dvd. (Otoh Selma resident Annie Lee Cooper trying to become a registered voter and getting sneeringly turned down in the third scene of the movie makes for an incredibly powerful statement of what's at stake - apparantly still or again is, since DuVernay and David Oyelowo say on the audio commentary there are new laws taking back what's been achieved in Selma right now?) (Oh, and re: Annie Lee Cooper, this is where not being an US American comes in hand. I thought the actress was familiar, but it didn't register until the movie was half way through that she was Ophra Winfrey, because the only times I see Ophra Winfrey is as an actress - in The Colour Purple or more recently The Butler -; we don't get her shows here in Germany. So I had no problem seeing her as her character from the start.)
You see strategy debates and disagreements instead of King mapping it all out and everyone nodding agreement. You get presented with an MLK as a compassionate, courageous man; the scene where he talks to the grandfather of the murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson, Carter Lee, hit me especially hard, because it's so difficult to show someone responding to grief without it coming across as trite, and here the circumstances were extra difficult, because of the way the grandson died, murdered by a cop, which has a gruesome current day resonance. And yet both the script and David Oyelowo as an actor pull it off and make King's response real and moving.
At the same time, King isn't presented as a saint. (And Ava DuVernay and her cinematographer resist the temptation Spielberg and his camera man fell into with photographing Lincoln the man against lots of halo like surrounding, might I add.) His response when Malcolm X briefly comes to town is insecure, annoyed and somewhat jealous, not serene. There's a strain in his marriage that's not just due to the work, and the visceral (all the more so because there's no shouting, both parties remain soft-spoken) painful scene where they have it out about his infidelities (which we're never shown, but it is made clear that's not just FBI slander, he does cheat on Coretta) is without any attempt by the narrative to blame his wife or otherwise excuse him. And while he has firm convictions, he doesn't have 20/20 foresight as to how things will work out.
There's also the paradox that for Selma as a getting public awareness event to succeed, they need the local sheriff to be a bigot and a brute. (When trying to persuade members of the local student committee to join forces, King points out that the sheriff in their previous, failed attempt played it right from the sheriff's pov; he kept his cops in line, and had passed out demonstrators carried to the hospital in stretchers. No national attention ensued. So the fact that the Selma authorities are so very hostile is an advantage.) Which you could read as a meta comment on the film as well: there's reason Ava DuVernay picked this one, and not the march to Washington, I assume. It comes with a horrible systematic injustice carried out in a brutal way, and personal courage on the part of the activists on every level.
I would add "making it suspenseful despite knowing the outcome", but while the movie is certainly suspenseful - incredibly so -, knowing the outcome in this particular case is a double-edged sword; yes, voting rights will be protected, but no, casual violence against people of colour by authorities won't become a thing of the past. Which prevents the movie from having that faintly smug "weren't things barbaric back then, and aren't we progressive right now to know better?" aura which some history drama does. On the contrary, it's as much a "J'Accuse" as it is a Rembrance of Things Past.
It also makes clear how ACTIVE peaceful resistance, which in some presentations has gotten the taint of consisting solely of speeches, really is, how much courage it costs, and how much sacrifice. How it was a decision everyone had to make constantly, instead of something once agreed on and then done.
Two background remarks: on the flippant side, I was amused that there were no less than four British actors in key roles of this very American movie - David Oyelowo as MLK, Carmen Edegojo as Coretta Scott King, Tim Roth as Governor Wallace and Tom Wilkinson as LBJ. As far as this foreigner can tell, their US Southern was entirely believable.
And speaking of Johnson, the other background remark: at the time of release, there was a controversy as to whether or not his portrayal was fair. Here are two representative articles: Unfair and Entirely Fair, respectively. What it is is certainly dramatically sound: leaving reform to the authorities will get you patronized and postponed at infinitum, you have to push them into acting.
In conclusion: an excellent film. Am glad I have it available for leisurely rewatch now.