Selma review

             Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” is a sensitive film that chronicles one of the most significant moments in black civil rights and dares to do so without drowning history in phony movie sentimentality. Which isn’t to say that DuVernay doesn't appreciate the romanticism of cinema or enjoys her own directorial flourishes now and again. On the contrary, “Selma” is a handsome looking feature that’s dramatically lit to highlight the emotional underpinnings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s fight for full African American equality in the south, but unlike the general swoft of historical films that deal in this subject, “Selma” doesn't need to charge its emotions with a false sense of retrospective austerity.

           Martin Luther King, as played marvelously by British actor David Oyelow, is technically the main character here but not necessarily the central focus of the story, as he is surrounded by many others who influence his behaviors and political actions. Much of the film follows the symbiotic but prickly relations between the minister turned activist and the President Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson). King needs Johnson to enforce legislation what would make it easier and more accessible for black voters to participate in the electoral process without facing intimidation or refusal by the all-white gate-keepers guarding the booths. Johnson’s reluctance to grant King this request is treated by the film as exactly what it was, cowardly and politically strategic, and the film climaxes with King leading the historic march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama--a monumental demonstration that prompted the President to finally sign the voting rights act of 1965.

           As much as this is a film about civil equality and the stifling conditions for American blacks alive during the ‘60s, it’s also a film about the political process and how minorities are used as bargaining chips by those in power who have something to gain from the transaction. Wilkinson’s portrayal as LBJ is that of pragmatist who saw the fight for black equality as a political future worth investing in, so long as he can work with the peaceful and reasonable King rather than politically divisive protesters like Malcolm X. Likewise, Oyelow’s King seems conflicted about his place in all of this as he yearns to bridge the rift between black constituents and white politicians through diplomacy, but also feels ostracized from both communities for taking the patient approach. Of course history has shown that his fate was sealed either way, and DuVerney is sure to conjure the looming threat that hovered over every decision he made.

         Where the film suffers is in its blocky script and uneven editing. After electrifying scenes with moments of immediate consequences, such as the dialogues between King and President, King and his impatient protesters or the morally ambivalent conversations between the President and the defiantly racist Alabama Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth), the movie tends to exhale between these sequences and lull into a melancholic static, waiting to recharge before the next place we have to visit or the next plot beat that needs to be activated. Because of this stop-start tendency the structure of the film feels loose and ragged in a way that undermines its most powerful moments. Extended scenes between Oyelow and Carman Ejogo, who plays King’s wife Corretta Scott, are interesting in theory but inexplicably inert and distracting in execution. This complicated marriage certainly has its own historical significance but its integration here within the overall narrative is too clumsy to fully appreciate.

         Even when “Selma” is taking a rest between the beats that DuVernay is obviously more excited to get to,  the textured and moody cinematography by Bradford Young as well as the subtle attention to period detail in the production design keeps the film alive with implied tension.  When the movie wakes up and is fully engaged in what’s going on, instead of keeping the audience at a distance behind museum rope, the power and grace of this history is presented with tangible vitality and blood pumping through its veins.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Feb-2015