Our second film of our Christmas Day double feature was my pick: SELMA, Ava DuVernays acclaimed new film on the 1965 voting rights march on the titular city led by Martin Luther King, Jr. I have read a number of articles and reviews comparing this film to Steven Spielbergs LINCOLN in its portrayal of the back-room politicizing and sheer logistical spadework of inciting authentic change in American lives. But while LINCOLN, for all its strengths of writing and acting, was still able to regard slavery and the Civil War from something of an arms length remove, this film grabs you and shoves you into the trenches alongside King, numerous notable civil rights leaders, and ordinary Americans who see an injustice, know its unjust, and will do everything in their (non-violent) power to set the wrong right. Its visceral, thoughtful and intelligently written (by Paul Webb, with an uncredited rewrite by DuVernay), and the director proves her ability with larger-scaled material after several small-scale independent relationship-drama successes. Bradford Youngs handsome, burnished cinematography brings history to life without ever resorting to nostaligizing, and John Legend and Common (who also portrays activist James Bevel) give us Glory, an appropriately stirring closing anthem. The performances are solid throughout, from Oprah Winfrey in what could have been a distracting supporting role to Henry G. Sanders, crushing his one big showcase scene as the grandfather of a slain activist, to Tim Roth as George Wallace, whose bigotry and institutional tolerance of same seems to have seeped into his very pores. But the standout, as it must be for the film to work at all, is David Oyelowo as King, in a fiery, well thought-out and intensely intelligent performance; he socks home the big moments of speechifying, sure, but hes also electrifying in the quiet scenes, as when he gobsmacks Lyndon Johnson (a spottily accented but still effective Tom Wilkinson) with the sheer quiet force of his insistence, or being confronted by his steadfast-but-pained wife Coretta (a slow-burning Carmen Ejogo) about FBI tapes of his apparent infidelities. It is one of the great grand-but-human epics, and its all the more vital in that the footage of the beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge could very easily have been ripped from CNN just weeks ago. But SELMA is a necessary reminder that, for better or worse, sometimes the more things stay the same, the more they change.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:55:49 +0000
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