To say Ava
DuVernay’s “Selma” feels relevant is a mammoth understatement. It’s
altogether animated, propelled and enlivened by its contemporary
urgency. “Selma” is a history lesson that throbs with today.
DuVernay, 42, a former publicist
with two low-budget dramas to her name, dramatizes the events around the
1965 Civil Rights march through Alabama, from Selma to Montgomery, with
a straightness of purpose befitting the famous protest’s direct path.
Hollywood often doesn’t nail this
kind of historical drama, and such films frequently sag under the weight
of their intentions. But DuVernay, working from a script by Paul Webb,
stays away from the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic this might have been.
Eluding myth-making, she instead goes for a focused realism. “Selma”
captures a movement, from the grassroots to the White House, and those
it took to move history.
“Selma” would pair well with Steven
Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” another atmospheric telling of history that cast
an expansive gaze at the not-always-pretty grunt work that enabled the
world to change.
Early in the film, King’s Southern
Christian Leadership Conference tries to check into a Selma hotel, and a
white man extends his hand only to clock King in the jaw. “This place,”
says one of King’s cohorts, “is perfect.”
This is the Deep South after 1964’s
landmark Civil Rights Act, but when poll taxes, vouchers and the like
kept black people away from the ballot box. In an early scene, an
elderly hospice nurse named Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey) tries to
register to vote, only be to be warned of “startin’ a fuss.” She’s told
to name Alabama’s 67 judges.
King’s group arrives in Selma having
just waged an unsuccessful campaign in Albany, Georgia, where the
police avoided the kind of confrontations that would draw headlines. The
toxic discrimination of Selma, though, offers King the “drama” he
requires to elevate the cause to front pages. Selma Sheriff Jim Clark
(Stan Houston) and Alabama Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) supply the
racist brutality that plays right into King’s mission.
A central theater of “Selma” isn’t
just the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where marchers were brutally beaten by
baton-wielding police — it’s in the White House. King strategy is trying
to pressure President Lyndon Johnson into acting on voting
restrictions. LBJ, played with appropriate Texan cajoling by Tom
Wilkinson, wants to focus on poverty with his Great Society. (This is a
controversial moment in the film —White House tapes suggest a more
collaborative LBJ than shown in the film and some have questioned the
film’s fairness here.)
It’s the political front of a battle
gathering in Selma, where activists debate, plot and rally support.
There’s argument over tactics: Compromise is an essential part of the
movement seen in “Selma.”
Throughout, the film is charted by
FBI field reports that tracked King’s activities. (Dylan Backer plays J.
Edgar Hoover, sneering that he’ll “dismantle” King’s family.) The
subtitles are a constant, ominous reminder of the movement’s sizable
foes and the nation’s sometimes shameful allegiances.
King is seen both intimately with
his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) and publicly from the pulpit, where
Oyelow’s King is fullest. He’s not a savior, but a wise man exercising
the reaches of his power to the best of his ability. As spectacular as
Oyelow’s humanizing performance is, “Selma” is not the MLK show. King is
more a savvy operator, gathering together strong forces around him.
Like few movies, “Selma” is peopled,
teaming with the individuals that comprise a mass. By the time the
protestors have assembled on the bridge for the 50 mile march, DuVernay
has put us among them, from the future Congressman John Lewis (Stephan
James) to the Reverend Hosea Williams (the impeccable Wendell Pierce,
whose anxious eyes look at the amassed troopers with an unforgettable
mix of fear and bravery).
Particularly affecting is Keith
Stanfield’s Jimmie Lee Jackson, the 26-year-old who was shot by a
trooper ahead of the march. It’s a death — an unarmed black man — that
telescopes the 50 years between then and now with tragic immediacy.
There’s a stirring freshness to
“Selma,” and it’s not just because of Bradford Young’s rich, moody
photography. There are shamefully few precedents of civil rights tales
in Hollywood to “Selma.” A change is gonna come.
The Palm Springs Guru thanks JAKE COYLE/ASSOCIATED PRESS and our friends at http://www.pressdemocrat.comfor sharing this great coverage.
You can find the original story at http://www.pressdemocrat.com/entertainment/3296590-181/selma-relevant-and-powerful-wvideo?page=0
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