(USA, 128
min.)
Dir. Ava
DuVernay, Writ. Paul Webb
Starring: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson,
Common, Lorraine Toussaint, Wendell Pierce, Tessa Thompson, Tim Roth, Oprah
Winfrey.
“What happens when a man stands up and says enough is
enough?” asks Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (David Oyelowo, A Most Violent Year) as he leads the landmark voting rights march
in Selma, a powerful dramatization of
the Civil Rights trek from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. What happens,
though, when a woman says enough is enough? Selma
itself rings with a palpable relevancy as it brings filmmaker Ava DuVernay into
the mainstream from the corners of American independent cinema in which she’s
had notable success with small films such as Middle of Nowhere. Selma
offers a resounding rallying cry of “enough is enough” from the onscreen Dr.
King and from the director Miss DuVernay. Conversations are growing and growing
about the necessity for more representation from female and minority voices
behind the camera in Hollywood, and Selma
couldn’t provide a better example for the necessity of diversity on both sides
of the frame. DuVernay dramatizes this slice-of-history with a forcefully
authentic voice.
It’s most impressive that DuVernay pulls off such an
involving and resounding film. Selma
succeeds by giving Dr. King a notable lead role, but the film arguably favours
the greater movement of which he was a leader. Selma frequently cuts back and forth between scenes of the intimate
life of King and his wife Coretta (Away
We Go’s Carmen Ejogo, very effective in her few scenes) and the film opens
with a direct address from King as he looks into the camera (doubling as a
mirror) while preparing to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. Coretta ties his ascot
while he laments his guilt over wearing such fine clothes while folks at home
are barely scraping by, and Selma
lovingly presents these two figures within their place in history.
The film then abruptly cuts to a group of young girls at a
church that is rocked by an explosion. The peacefulness of the Kings’ preamble
amplifies the jarring violence that ensues. Selma
ensures the audience is shaken within five minutes as innocent lives are lost. The
firm contrast of Dr. King’s honour from the Noble committee and the violence against
African Americans more than capably says enough is enough.
Selma then
encapsulates the activists organizing the march and participating in
demonstrations in Selma as scenes with Dr. King punctuate the story of the
march with debates in the White House with President Lyndon Johnson (Tom
Wilkinson) and at home with Coretta. Johnson wants Dr. King to call off the
march and wait a few years to introduce legislation to amend voting rights (the
cause for which the activists in Selma are marching) while Coretta worries that
the escalating threats against her husband and her family are worth the trade. Selma underlines the gravity of each
dilemma using frequent intertitles highlighting FBI surveillance against Dr.
King: he’s perceived as a threat both to the system and to the status quo.
It’s mostly in the bracingly confrontational scenes between
King and Johnson that Selma feels
like a period piece that Hollywood hasn’t seen before. The film paints Johnson
not as an adversary, but as a man reluctant to exert his power to change the
status quo. There’s not so much an anger to Selma
as there is a palpable fatigue for keeping things the way they are, and every frame of these confrontations feels fair as a consequence of this perspective: people do tire of inertia. The
restlessness over a comfortable norm that benefits few moves like a current in Selma and incites each member of the
ensemble, black or white, to tip the audience in the favour of those hungry for
change.
Central to the film is Oyelowo’s commanding performance as
Martin Luther King, Jr. Oyelowo delivers many of King’s speeches (usually
alterations of) with magnetic force, embodying the leader’s passion and
charisma, and eliciting the stirring inspiration of King’s influence as he
rouses the audience with his lively gestures and dramatic oration. It’s a
revelatory and star-making performance, yet Oyelowo never overwhelms the film
despite how grandly DuVernay lets him shine. Selma truly plays an ensemble film and each actor from Ejogo to
Common to Wendell Pierce to Lorraine Toussaint and, finally, to Oprah Winfrey effectively
embodies both the personal and collective struggles of the marchers in Selma.
The centerpiece of the film is a volatile confrontation of
the marchers by the state trooper that comes when the march first reaches the
Edmund Pettus Bridge. This expertly choreographed sequence is a hellish chaos of
brutal violence as the peaceful protestors are met with force, but DuVernay and
cinematographer Bradford Young capture the explosive encounter with objective
frankness. Selma neither
sensationalizes nor hides the violence and instead conveys it with a gritty
realism. The involving perspective with which the film presents the violence on
the bridge lets one play witness to the shocking images that helped wake up
more corners of America’s consciousness during this episode of history.
DuVernay’s greatest feat, finally, is finding power in the
image of a united front. This essence frequently arises through the harmony of
the actors, but it also comes in the expansively intimate scope of the film
that deftly situates the Selma march within the larger national consciousness.
Each shot of the marchers traversing the Edmund Pettus Bridge is grander than
the next, and each sequence feels like a step towards progress as the shots
become wider and the crowd becomes larger. The importance of Selma becomes more
perceptible with each minute and the lessons of this chapter from history
become more universal as Selma’s scope
expands as Dr. King and company march on to Selma’s
final frame.
Rating: ★★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Selma opens in Ottawa on January 9 at Landmark Kanata, Silvercity Gloucester,
and Cineplex South Keys from Paramount Pictures Canada.
