Selma – a review: I’ve finally seen Selma and can report it is a proper civil rights movie. By that I mean it takes few chances either thematically or aesthetically. The icons remain intact and the movement free from revisionist recriminations. This cautious (non-controversial) strategy is understandable in a risk averse Hollywood where box office margins are being exquisitely calibrated and boycott possibilities loom. Although boxed-in by those kinds of commercial expectations, Selma delivers even more than it should. That unexpected bounty is due to first-time screenwriter Paul Webb’s decision to give some focus on the disagreements that beset the movement and the doubts of a humanized Dr. Martin Luther King. He and director Ava DuVernay’s decision to maintain those underlying tension throughout the film prevents it from succumbing to hagiographic temptations that must have been powerful given the hallowed subject and the revered characters. Interestingly, both King (David Oyelowo) and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejojo) are played by Afro-Brits. Director DuVernay reportedly played a large role in casting and perhaps she’s a devotee of this notion of diasporic resonance; the belief that African-American characters gain more texture when refracted through the sensibilities of black Brits. The success of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o in “12 Years A Slave” increased the currency of that belief as well as the outsized success of Idris Elba. The film’s intent to give a sense of the movement that forced President Lyndon B. Johnson to push the Voting Rights Bill is fulfilled. It focuses not just on the racist opposition that creates the need for such a movement but also on the deal making that helped it succeed and the ideological tensions that occasionally deterred it. The tensions between the youth-based Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) were given more shrift than usual, but still were significantly underplayed. DuVernay cleverly reveals the extent of FBI surveillance by superimposing official data entries as captions over certain portrayed incidents. This gesture may once have seemed radical but it has become a mainstream commonplace that J. Edgar Hoover (played by Dylan Baker) despised King and aggressively pursued him, specifically targeting his marriage and domestic relations. DuVernay and Webb film is also the first mainstream fare to tackle the subject of King’s infidelities, albeit very gently. The quiet dignity of Ejojo’s Coretta King, a steady, stunning presence throughout, deeply shames her husband for his indiscretions. Her fears about the “fog of death” that surrounds Kings movement are made clear early in the film and are deeply registered in her burdened but determined bearing. When her jailed husband has a spasm of jealousy about a meeting she had with Malcolm X, she deftly defuses it with an adorable mixture of deference and defiance. There are good performances all around. Oprah, who also co-produced, plays a southern matron, a role for which she is becoming typecast. Tim Roth plays a hell of a George Wallace. And Wendell Pierce has Hosea Williams down. There are smaller roles well played by folks like Cuba Gooding, Jr., Martin Sheen, Common, Tessa Thompson and Keith Stanfield. Brad Pitt’s Plan B, which also helped produce “12 Years A Slave,” was also a producer. There was some controversy regarding the portrayal of LBJ as a reluctant supporter of Voting Rights and an opponent of the Selma March. But just as DuVernay sought to humanize King, she had similar aspirations for the LBJ character and many historical accounts support her portrayal.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 16:26:16 +0000
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