I saw SELMA last night, directed by Ava DuVernay, written by Paul Webb, shot by Bradford Young, starring David Oyelowo, and I have spent much of this day thinking about why I loved it so much and what it meant to me. It clearly inspired a number of terrific reviewers, as well. To paraphrase Jenni Miller, there is a message, but this isn’t “a message movie.” The cast is enormous and enormously impressive. It’s not about history; it’s about people (who made history). The violence is somewhat stylized and it is shot beautifully. I enjoyed Scott Foundas’s writing in Variety. “So Selma ends on a note of queasy triumph, with the sense that we have come so far and yet still have so far to go, and the hope that the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice.” Peter Travers from Rolling Stone got all shook up. “Failure to indict white police in the killing of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island has nothing and everything to do with Selma. The sad fact is that racial injustice is timelier than ever. Righteous fury is in the air. And that fervor to stand up and be counted is all over Selma….In Glory, a song by Common and John Legend that ends the film, we hear the lyric, Thats why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up. . . ./They say, Stay down, and we stand up. DuVernays momentous film is a testament to those words.” But, for me, AO Scott (NYT) expressed it best in a number of ways, not the least of which was when he commented on the acting in relationship to the subject matter. “To say that an extraordinary group of actors supports Mr. Oyelowo’s performance is to state the obvious and also, somehow, to get it backwards. Dr. King worked in the service of the movement, not the other way around, and Mr. Oyelowo’s quiet, attentive, reflective presence upholds this democratic principle by illuminating the contributions of those around him. I have rarely seen a historical film that felt so populous and full of life, so alert to the tendrils of narrative that spread beyond the frame.” Scott ends the review with “Selma is not a manifesto, a battle cry or a history lesson. It’s a movie: warm, smart, generous and moving in two senses of the word. It will call forth tears of grief, anger, gratitude and hope. And like those pilgrims on the road to Montgomery, it does not rest.”
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 05:37:53 +0000
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