Review: Selma
Selma is the first feature film to put the eminent pastor, activist, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. front and center (there was a 1978 television miniseries King with Paul Winfield in the title role). Though Paul Webb's screenplay had interested the likes of Spike Lee, Lee Daniels and Michael Mann, insufficient funding kept the project from getting off the ground. Call it fate or a blessing in disguise: the directorial reins were ultimately taken by the best person for the job: Ava DuVernay.
An African-American filmmaker, publicist and distributor, DuVernay had several credits under belt including the well-received Middle of Nowhere, but nothing near the weight and scope of Selma with its sprawling cast of characters, political strategising and showboating, and emotional spectacle. Her achievement here is no small feat and should not be taken for granted.
Like Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, Selma focuses on a particular period in its title character's life, specifically the events leading up to and including the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. By this time, King was a Nobel Laureate, the 1963 March on Washington and his stirring "I Have a Dream" speech key factors in President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The South may have been legally desegregated but Jim Crow discrimination was still in full effect; though blacks could now register to vote, voting officials employed all sorts of tactics to dissuade and deny their basic right. In an early scene, Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey) has her registration form reviewed - she's told to recite the preamble to the Constitution, then asked how many county judges there are in Alabama. When she successfully addresses both requests, the official tells her to name all 57 judges. She cannot and her registration form is denied for approval.
When Johnson tables King's insistence on prioritizing legislation granting blacks the right to vote unencumbered and robust enforcement of federal protocol eliminating the dismissal and illegal denial of blacks to vote in order to focus on the War on Poverty, King and the other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Committee (SCLC), with hesitant participation from the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC), move forward with the march. The film shows how canny a media manipulator King can be: he realises that the volatility of Selma's local law enforcement could work in the movement's favour. The only way to put pressure on Johnson is to raise public consciousness, and the only way to ensure that is to get their struggle on the evening news and the front pages of the national newspapers.
The infamous "Bloody Sunday," in which the marchers are savagely attacked by Selma police on Edward Pettus Bridge, is a breathtaking and sickening sequence (not to mention a strong reminder of how timely and relevant the film is given the recent events in Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York). How can one remain unmoved by the magnitude of the injustices they suffered? One of the wonders of Selma is how the key supporting characters register with only a few minutes of screen time. One won't forget the dignity shown by Winfrey, or Henry G. Sanders as the elderly father of a slain son (King's words of comfort strike an affecting chord: "There are no words to soothe you…but God was the first to cry for your boy."), or Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, a woman all too aware of her husband's feet of clay. Then there is David Oyelowo, who delivers a towering performance as King, convincing as both the fiery orator and the pensive, private man. If nothing else, DuVernay, Webb, and Oyelowo are to be lauded for their minimalist approach in mythologising the man.
It almost seems churlish to pick on such an accomplished, engaging, superlative film but it also would be remiss to overlook how Johnson is shortchanged. He and the unapologetically racist George Wallace (Tim Roth) are posited as the big bads of the film, constantly losing the moral high ground to King. Tom Wilkinson more than hints at Johnson's wheeler-dealer personality but there's something in the film's tone that skews his reasoning. "You've got one big issue," Johnson tells King at one point, "I've got 101." There was Vietnam, of course, a point of contention for those concerned with the domestic unrest ("If he can send troops to Vietnam, why can't he send troops to Selma?"), but also a source of genuine anguish for the 36th president. Johnson's characterisation feels reductive and unbalanced, a misstep for a film otherwise clear-eyed and levelheaded.
Selma
Directed by: Ava DuVernay
Written by: Paul Webb
Starring: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth, Oprah Winfrey, Giovanni Ribisi, Common, Lorraine Toussaint, Wendell Pierce, Henry G. Sanders, Dylan Baker, Jeremy Strong, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Martin Sheen, Alessandro Nivola
