It’s not Martin Luther King Jr.’s actual birthday, but it is the Monday that the country is off work to celebrate his birthday! What could be a better day to publish my review of Selma, a movie that tells the story of King’s 1955 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama? Well, probably his actual birthday would have been a better day. But anyway:
Selma is a film about Martin Luther King Jr. that recounts his movement to organize a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama to put pressure on LBJ to create the Voting Rights Act of 1955. It’s not one of the stories I remember most about MLK from high school history class, but both because of recent events and recent politics surrounding immigration it is extremely relevant to our times. Though, for a second, I’d like to put aside the historical context of the film, the modern relevance, and that it’s a film about one of the US’s most important historical figures. What Selma is, really, is a really damn great movie.
MLK must be a difficult character to adapt, but Selma presents him as flawed, imperfect, and still as the great man who led a movement. He’s a great man who does a lot of good, but the film doesn’t shy away from allowing him to be a real person. He argues with his wife, he mourns, and most interestingly, he schemes. MLK was a civil rights leader, not a politician, but he still had tactics and PR savvy and frustrations with other civil rights groups. Selma isn’t just about one man who has a dream and is the underdog- it’s also about a community organizer who knew how to get a movement working. It’s not a view I’ve ever seen in a movie, where they generally try to romanticize characters like this too much, but it’s a fascinating one.
All of the acting in this movie is fantastic. David Oyelowo’s performance as King is subdued, but manages to carry both the great ideas and passion of King, as well as the man that existed before and after all of the speeches. Tom Wilkinson plays Lyndon Johnson as a pure politician who is a perfect foil for King- where King uses visuals to push his ideals, Johnson weighs all his own ideals based on how they look to the public. The actress who plays Coretta Scott King, Carmen Ejogo, hasn’t gotten much notice in other reviews I’ve read, but after seeing her performance in this I can’t wait to see her in many more films to come.
A lot of people have called Ava DuVernay’s lack of a Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards a snub, and after seeing the film I can completely understand why. The way the acts of violence that occurred during this story are directed is absolutely amazing. People were gasping in the theater I was in, and I cannot imagine a film better showing the effect these events had on King and the rest of the civil rights movement. It uses the language of cinema so well to shock, horrify, and make you grieve along with the characters, and it’s some of the best directing of violence I’ve ever seen. Along with actual hate crimes and police brutality, I’d also like to point out the scene where an older black woman attempts to register to vote, and is denied. Few films have shown injustice this starkly in the past, and it makes the story into a truly great film.
Selma is not a great movie because it tells a great story, even though it does, or because it’s about one of the biggest figures of US history, even though it does, or because it is about a still relevant and important movement, even though it is. Selma is a great movie because it is done with beautiful nuance, stunning affect, and fantastic characterization. I’m not sure if it’s the best film of 2014, but it’s the one that will stick with me the longest.
TOP HAT ROBOT 