The Utter Brilliance of “Selma”

Rarely on film does one searing, early moment so completely define everything else that follows. To understand Selma is to face that moment, just as to be a part of that time was to endure it. I won’t spoil it, but you’ll know it when it happens. It is jaw-dropping, it is crucial, and it obtains its power because it really occurred.

Selma follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader and pastor who led the 1965 march of African-Americans and allies from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The march, a demonstration intended to realize for African-Americans the right to vote, faced violence that captured the nation.

But didn’t African-Americans already have the right to vote? Technically, yes, but not effectively. Impossible tasks were placed before them. Pay poll taxes for every year they were unregistered, require registered voters to vouch for you, recite the names of 60 specific elected officials at the drop of a hat, each of these obstacles more unconstitutional than the last.

Selma doesn’t feel like a biographical movie as much as it feels like a war film. This isn’t because it’s filled with violence. There are moments of brutality, but it’s of the sort that’s tempered by history, that feels important to witness but isn’t overstated because no filmmaker can equal the true violence captured on archive footage.

Selma feels like a war film because it follows the strategies each side employs to achieve their goals. Dr. King makes one move, Alabama governor George Wallace makes another, President Lyndon B. Johnson makes yet another. It realizes the architecture and strategy behind protest better than any film I can remember. In helping audiences to better understand the language of protest, director Ava DuVernay connects the film to the very fractured United States we live in today.

It also finds the humanity struggling inside these characters, the strengths and weaknesses they couldn’t help but bring with them to a violent time. Selma is a poetic film, a film that speaks the language of faith to invoke the spirit of it, that imbues the entire experience of witnessing what happened with that faith. It helps you understand what guided men and women through a time when fear could have easily turned them back. It is not just a film about civil rights, it is a film about what moves people toward their purpose.

Yet it is all framed by one early, searing moment that clearly defines what that purpose must be.

I can’t imagine a more important film this year. Selma will be considered and should earn a bevy of awards, including a strong showing at the Oscars.

Many biographical movies seek to style reality, to give it a sleeker look and make everything happen in a removed cinematic universe where everyone mutters in shadows. Instead, Selma is visually smart without being visually dense. It is accessible and says what it has to say with a minimum of extra complication.

David Oyelowo’s portrayal of Dr. King isn’t remarkable in its drama, but rather for its restraint. He feels like a real person I could picture walking into a room, sitting down with, learning something from. The rest of the ensemble is remarkable. Even the smallest roles are filled with conviction and feeling.

There’s been some criticism over Tom Wilkinson’s portrayal of President Johnson, particular in regard to his use of the FBI to spy on Dr. King. I’ll address this for my Texas audience: LBJ did those things. That’s a matter of historical record. I still view LBJ as a great leader, but even legends make mistakes and sometimes trust the wrong people. Selma itself discusses the mistakes that Dr. King made as well, both in his personal life and in his early civil rights leadership. To say that one great man is allowed to be examined, flaws and all, without allowing the other to be examined through the same lens is hypocritical. I won’t say Wilkinson gets the accent down, but he does get the personality, and watching him chew out Wallace is one of the true joys in this film.

It’s not a movie about President Johnson, though, and that’s important to remember. It’s a movie about the leaders, the people, and the spirit of a place that became a battleground for one of the most important moments of the 20th century.

Selma isn’t interested in the celebrity or idolization of any of its figures. It’s interested in what they did, why they chose to do it, and the fears, joys, and faith they felt in lifting that burden.

Does it Pass the Bechdel Test?

This section helps us discuss one aspect of movies that we’d like to see improved – the representation of women. Read why we’re including this section here.

1. Does Selma have more than one woman in it?

Yes. Dr. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King is played by Carmen Ejogo. She captures some of the film’s most powerful moments and messages.

Oprah Winfrey plays Annie Lee Cooper. Tessa Thompson plays Diane Nash, an incredibly important yet often forgotten leader in the civil rights movement. Lorraine Toussaint plays civil rights figure Amelia Boynton, Charity Jordan plays Viola Lee Jackson, and Tara Ochs plays Viola Liuzzo, a role with few lines but that you won’t be forgetting any time soon. The film is filled out with several other female characters.

One cannot look at this moment in history and pretend women were not as big a part of it as men.

2. Do they talk to each other?

Yes.

3. About something other than a man?

Yes. Women speak about voting rights, plan the march, and discuss African-American history in the film’s most overwhelmingly poetic and culturally communicative moment.

You know what? There’s not really much for me to say here. Selma gets it pretty right. It’s a film that can’t help but focus on male leaders – Dr. King, President Johnson, and Governor Wallace – but remembers that women were just as central to this movement.

Personally, I’d love to have seen more of Diane Nash. She had co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and in may ways created the blueprint of modern nonviolent protest. While the film does treat her as part of Dr. King’s inner circle, it doesn’t exactly make clear just how important and experienced a leader she was. It does this to certain male figures as well, so it doesn’t feel biased.

It’s a minor quibble – Selma already strikes a fine balance of invoking a moving experience and teaching the historical context in which it happened to both men and women – but if you’d like to learn more about a woman who doesn’t get the due she deserves this and this are good places to start.

Trailers of the Week — A Good Week for Cthulhu, Australians, Drug Lords

Look, I’m not saying that Cthulhu, Australians, and drug lords are interconnected. I’m just saying they all enjoyed terrific trailers this week. Coincidence? Decide for yourself. I’m not your mother. (Or am I?)

The great thing about this week is that nearly all the films are ones I hadn’t known of or had only heard about in passing. While it was a tremendous week for the Cthulhustralian conspiracy, I’m going to make it wait a moment.

RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS

This is the trailer of the week. I’ve tried writing on it now a few times, but I take the subject matter too personally. I’ll save the lectures for another day.

Suffice to say that films by, starring, or about Native Americans and First Nations peoples are far too few. It’s a rare thing when the voices of a few artists can contribute to speak not just on an endangered culture, but one we’re responsible for eliminating. It’s special to me because those few voices were once joined by tens of millions, and when stories are told by the few surviving, you can sometimes sense the power of those tens of millions in every word.

SPRING

Wow. In two minutes, Spring does what The Strain has failed to do in a season – send chills up my spine. If you’ve read two words from me, you know I’m a horror movie fan, but if you’ve read more than two words, you know I’m pretty elitist about it. I want my horror smart, psychological, otherworldly or supernatural, based on complex characters. I want to be scared to the point I’m a heartbeat away from laughing. I want to be terrified to the point where I’m begging you for a jump scare, just for the adrenaline release.

Spring looks disturbing in all the best ways, with hints of the quiet build and uncluttered presentation of Scandinavian horror, the color and alluring romanticism of Italian horror, the body horror and catharsis narrative of American horror, and the social malaise metaphors of Lovecraft. If it all comes together, this could be a special horror movie.

MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT

Gareth Edwards helmed the first Monsters, and his use of clever, low-budget trickery and knack for brilliant visuals nabbed him the director’s chair for this year’s Godzilla. What’d I think of Godzilla? It has some of the best trickery and brilliant visuals you’ll see this year, paired with godawful story delivery and acting.

Tom Green (no, not that Tom Green) takes over for the Monsters sequel and what could’ve been a direct-to-DVD mess looks like the Godzilla movie I wish I’d seen, but with 1,000% more Cthulhu goodness. Lines of giant tentacle beasts combing the dusty land, overpowering our modern armies. Tiny Cthulhuraptors engaging in desert jeep chases and being tackled by army dogs.

Yeah, it’s more military hoo-ra-ism, but we really do some nice hoo-ra-ism. [I’ll be honest, Re-reading that last sentence gives me pause after talking about Rhymes for Young Ghouls.] I worry about the acting and the staying power of the visual effects – for modestly budgeted sci-fi films, you usually have to choose one or the other, and it’s possible the trailer contains all the best shots. Still, there’s a visual confidence here, and it looks closer to the Godzilla reboot I wish I’d seen than the one that came out. As a trailer alone, this generates real buzz for a film that has next to none.

FELONY

Ooh, but this looks good. The setup is fairly basic – a hero cop (Joel Edgerton) has a few beers and accidentally hits a teenager on his way home. A veteran detective (Tom Wilkinson) takes it upon himself to clean up the incident and make sure the right questions aren’t asked. A crusader (Jai Courtney) decides it doesn’t all add up, and pursues his own investigation.

That’s a million straight-to-DVD plots right there, but the difference is this pedigree – Wilkinson’s ability to play real-world fearsome is rare, while Courtney and Edgerton are two of Australia’s best up-and-coming actors. Edgerton has shown a chameleon quality you wouldn’t expect by looking at him, and he also had a hand in writing one of my films of the year thus far, The Rover.

It doesn’t hurt that Felony has already came out in Australia to rave reviews.

GOD HELP THE GIRL

Emily Browning, 25, will probably be playing teenagers until she’s 35. She just has that look. This is a problem, since the Australian actress has been on the verge of breaking through as a mature, complex performer for years now. At some point, something like her Sleeping Beauty, brutally experimental and tonally haunting, is going to break through into the mainstream and serve notice that she’s a powerhouse talent.

Until that point, if she’s going to play a high schooler, let’s hope it’s at least in indie films like God Help the Girl. Director Stuart Murdoch, of chamber pop band Belle & Sebastian, seems to have found a colorful, energetic visual style that reflects the baroque, yesteryear tone of his music. I’m not expecting this to blow the doors off the theater, but if it can convey the bouncy yet melancholic tone unique to Murdoch’s band and achieve the same lullaby quality through its visuals and Browning’s performance, we’re in for something charming and – dare I hope – reassuring. And reassuring isn’t often a priority in movies at the moment.

KILL THE MESSENGER

I’m glad Jeremy Renner’s getting back to some character acting. He’s the kind of actor who you have play Carmine Polito in American Hustle, or San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb here, not on whose shoulders you rest an entire franchise (hi, Bourne, Mission: Impossible, potential Hawkeye movie).

Who was Webb? He was a reporter who revealed that the Reagan Administration had shielded drug dealers on U.S. soil from prosecution, as a way of funding their suppliers, the Contras, in their CIA-backed coup of Nicaragua. And 20-odd years later, we wonder why the children of Central America are showing up on our doorstep, and act like they aren’t our direct responsibility for what we did to their countries in the name of the Cold War.

Though he was torn apart by mainstream media in the 1990s for his claims, much of Webb’s research was later vindicated. He died in 2004, having committed what was ruled a suicide. By shooting himself. In the back of the head. Execution style. Twice.

I fully expect, and hope, for Renner to nail this to the wall.

Paradise Lost is the other drug lord movie, starring Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) and Benicio Del Toro (Che) as Pablo Escobar. In truth, it looks pretty iffy, and I’d much rather leave you wanting to go learn more about Gary Webb.