[five-star-rating]David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Oprah Winfrey, Allesandro Nivoli, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Giovanni Ribisi, Common, Tessa Thompson, Nigel Thatch[/five-star-rating]
Like all fights for equality – and we in the LGBT community should know – history is fraught with politics, personalities, sacrifices, compromises, calculated losses, secret deals, and trade-offs. Selma shows all of this. It also makes so many smart choices that it should be a lesson to other biopics.
Martin Luther King’s words still ring true, especially as Ferguson, Staten Island, and even Sanford have erupted in protest; “Our lives are not fully lived until we are willing to die for who we are and what we believe.”
In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. (Oyelowo) went to Selma, Alabama, to secure voting rights for blacks in the rural South. Blacks were harassed and physically threatened when they tried to register; they often lost their jobs. This was just two years after four girls died in a Birmingham church bombing. People were still being lynched and beaten, and even killed by police officers never brought to justice.
Selma is fascinating because it digs into all the grit of history. We may like to think of MLK as a virtuous minister who gently taught nonviolent protest. What we could miss is that his work was calculated to pressure local and Federal government. He met with President Lyndon Johnson (Wilkinson) who felt that voter rights were too complicated after the Civil Rights Act passed earlier that year. MLK also used rabble-rousers like James Bevel (Common) and Diane Nash (Thompson). He consolidated the frustrations and braveries of common people – Annie Lee Cooper (Winfrey) hit a sheriff with a purse, and MLK made her a symbol for black voter’s rights.
Furthermore, MLK preached activism and protest from the pulpit. He explained there was danger; people might even be killed.
He wasn’t without help, from his wife (Ejogo) and even the contentious Malcolm X (Thatch). The minister also wasn’t without his enemies – deadly white supremacists and people within the government willing to spy on MLK and divulge his infidelities to ruin the man’s reputation.
Selma covers all of this expertly. It also does what other biopics refuse to do; it focuses on one point in time – those three months in Alabama – instead of the man’s whole life. The movie has emotional heft and drive – a tense arc – instead of just skipping from one chronological moment to another. There is a sepia-toned gravity to the images, even as they devolve into blood and gore. Relative novice Ava DuVernay directs based on a first script by Paul Webb; I love that these “newcomers” can often make better, more powerful films than the seasoned Hollywood insiders.
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The performances are all-around stellar. Oyelowo (Jack Reacher) does not exactly mimic MLK, finding the humanity by marrying himself with the dynamic preacher. Ejogo (Away We Go) brings a quiet, weary pride to Coretta – a woman who knows her marriage is compromised both by her husband’s work and his cheating. (I could use pretty words like “indiscretions” instead of “cheating,” but the grittiness of Selma would beg for honest, blunt words.)
This forthright film is one of the best of the year and one of the best biopics of the last decade. It should not be missed.
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