King among films
Film
Selma (M)
4.5 stars
David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson
DIRECTOR AVA DUVERNAY
REVIEW MARK NAGLAZAS
When we think of Martin Luther King, the image that comes to mind is of a serene, stoic man leading non-violent protests and delivering soaring speeches in those hypnotic Southern preacher cadences, elegant and persuasive pleas for justice which forever changed America.
Even though Selma director Ava DuVernay could not secure the rights to use those speeches (apparently they are owned by Steven Spielberg, who is planning his own movie on King) she and her brilliant leading man David Oyelowo capture the power of King as the greatest orator of his age.
However, what makes Selma such a satisfying and enthralling work is that it shows him not just being able to move the masses through the force of his words. Rather, this bold, beautifully crafted movie reveals him to be a canny political operator, an astute strategist who knew that the fight for equality involved the head and not just the heart.
Rather than attempting a full-blown King biopic, DuVernay zeros in on a single crucial episode, the battle for black voting rights (in this sense Selma closely resembles Spielberg’s Lincoln, a movie about another great orator shown to be a smart political operator).
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson fulfilled the wishes of John F. Kennedy by shepherding into law the Civil Rights Act. However, Southern white racists were still using arcane regulations and bullying tactics to prevent African Americans from registering to vote and taking control of their own destinies. So in early 1965 King and the brains trust of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference descended on the small Alabama town of Selma itching for a fight.
Referencing an earlier incident involving a racist white official, King asks one of the local activists about what they can expect. “Is your sheriff Bull O’Connor or is he Laurie Pritchett?” When they tell him he is Bull O’Connor he knows he has hit the jackpot.
Peaceful protest is the right approach from a moral point of view. But King knows that in order to win the hearts and minds of Americans they must confront the ugly face of racism and segregation, which means images flashing around the world of white policemen taking the batons to unarmed black protesters.
Which is what King gives them on what has come to be known as Bloody Sunday, when the police attack hundreds of African Americans and their white supporters as they set out to march from Selma to the State capital Montgomery to bring attention to voting inequities.
While DuVernay does a sensational job in recreating such history-making public events — the Bloody Sunday assault at the Edmund Pettus Bridge has an extraordinary scale and force for a movie made on a modest budget — the most enthralling aspect of Selma are the behind-the- scenes debates between King and his supporters, and King and President Johnson.
DuVernay also acknowledges King was not alone in the fight for justice. He is the central figure in Selma but DuVernay reveals he had help from a lot of smart, brave, deeply committed people, with the likes of future US ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young offering advice and challenging him ever step of the way.
A more problematic choice by DuVernay is to make Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) a more antagonistic figure than he seems to have been in reality rather than showing him as King’s close collaborator in the fight for equal voting rights.
I initially flinched when I saw Johnson, one of the great heroes of the Civil Rights era, depicted as a dark, scheming Nixon-like politician who was so anxious to slow down King’s push for equality that, in the film’s most controversial scene, he lets pernicious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Tim Roth) off the leash. Critics of the movie claim there were enough white villains at the time without making Johnson another one.
However, after a second viewing of the movie Johnson doesn’t come across as a villain so much as a supreme politician struggling to balance forces, a progressive who understands the significance of King and the fight for equality but who is equally concerned with his own place in history. DuVernay might not get the facts right but the overall thrust has satisfied many historians.
And as drama it works superbly. Rather than another starchy, myth-making biography of a great man, DuVernay has turned the well-known events of recent history into a gripping drama, a tale of black empowerment that not only sends us to Wikipedia to flesh out the story but one that speaks to current racial tensions in the US and elsewhere.
And in Oyelowo, a 38-year- old British actor who until now has only had support roles in movies such as The Butler and Interstellar, DuVernay has the perfect Martin Luther King. He captures his moral force and his intelligence, a quality of aliveness and awareness of history being made that you wish we had in our leaders today.
Selma is now screening.
