Chris Knipp
01-09-2015, 11:58 PM
Ava DuVernay: Selma (2014)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/sel.jpg
A flawed, moving, muted epic about Martin Luther King and civil rights marches, Alabama, 1965
Tremendously ambitious and yet in some ways modest and understated, Ava duVarney's Selma is a distinctive epic that avoids cliches (though not distortions) and is often beautiful to look at and moving. The scenes of the marches in Alabama, shot head on (by Bradford Young), are solemn and impressive, simply in themselves a profound celebration of the nobility of the common man and the bravery of the Sixties civil rights movement in America. Ava DuVernay, whose 2012 feature Middle of Nowhere (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3359-MIDDLE-OF-NOWHERE-(Ava-DuVernay-2012)&p=28664#post28664)was subtle and understated, has moved to something big and still maintained a certain quietness. She hasn't let the large scale overwhelm her or lead her into anything crude or flashy. In fact this picture is so restrained at times that we may forget it's in color.
The decision to confine the story to a three-month period in 1965 avoids unnecessary biopic rituals. Bloody and tumultuous though moments are here, this is a political procedural, and has been compared as such to Spielberg's Lincoln. The white British writer Paul Webb, who is responsible for the script, presents Dr. King as not so much a saintly orator as a shrewd strategist who consciously uses nonviolent protest and media awareness to highlight racist violence. As seen here, King stages the Selma and Selma to Montgomery marches on a courthouse and across a bridge to draw national and worldwide attention to the black struggle for the right to vote in the South. It's the remedy to an injustice beautifully embodied in a second prologue (the first is about King's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance) about the experience of Annie Lee Cooper (nobly played by Oprah Winfrey) and her doomed effort to register to vote. (Unfortunately the sequence of the three marches isn't made fully clear in the alternation of action scenes and strategy dialogues.)
Overall, events are schematically defined as a battle between Dr. King and President Johnson. LBJ wants to focus on his War on Poverty. He hasn't time at the moment, he insists, for voters' rights; but Dr. King can't wait. President Johnson was no saint, but he takes a serious beating ere, his role in opposing Martin Luther King emphasized at the expense of an actual presidential legacy in domestic social legislation rivaled by few other US presidents. Wilkinson's performance, and look, are cold and ugly, in scenes were he's attempting to bully Dr. King and conniving with J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker). Wilkinson, a powerful but not a subtle actor, is as cartoonish as Tim Roth here.
Some of the dialogues and encounters, between LBJ and his minions (Dylan Baker; the scrawny Giovanni Ribisi), between King and his fellow campaigners, or with his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo), are sometimes stiff, stolid, and slow. They show why Rex Reed found (http://observer.com/2014/12/wrapping-up-the-year-in-film/) the film too "somber," "muted," "understated" and "by-the-numbers" for his taste. Scott Founas of Variety (http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-selma-1201354433/) may be right that this would have become a "campy free-for-all" if the original director Lee Daniels had done the job. But a little of the juice Daniels injected into his The Butler might actually have helped.
In contrast, the physical events are classic, almost worthy of Sergei Eisenstein, or potentially so. The vulnerable, even elderly Negroes fallen on the bridge or in front of the court house steps may recall the Odessa Steps sequence of Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. And there is enormous depth in the casting of every minor role.
Ironically four of the principle actors are British, David Oyelowo as King, Ejogo as his wife, Tom Wilkinson as LBJ and Tim Roth as Governor George Wallace. This should not detract from the fact that there are some fine and actually far more vivid and real African American actors in other important, as well as minor, roles. It's also deeply ironic that we had to wait fifty years for an important movie about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King to be made; that it comes when the betrayal of that movement has never been more clear.
It's as an ensemble piece and as a solemnly quiet, small-scaled epic that Selma shines. In its specifics many will find fault with it -- the avoidance of much that is frank about Dr. King's home life or extramarital affairs, for instance. And it simply offers too little new or specific detail about the man, other than that his friends called him "Doc." And yet DuVernay maintains a kind of grandeur that is hard to explain; it's in the editing (by Spencer Averick), in the measured movement from one sequence to the next; in the soaring rap song at the end that brings the story into contemporary relevance. As one watches the brutality of the Klansmen and the southern white sheriffs and policemen, it's hard not to think of the heavily armed American urban cops of today and the constant killing of unarmed young black men by police who go free.
The events here are so powerful, and so long overdue in a major feature film, and DuVernay's restraint makes the presentation of them so impeccable, that one cannot but view Selma with awe and respect. Nonetheless, despite the film's distinction, it would be unjust not also to recognize the places where it falls short. But whether or not it's one of the very best films of the year, it's certainly one of the most important ones.
Selma, 128 mins., had limited US release 25 December 2014 after an AFI 9 Dec. debut. Wide release 9 January 2015. UK 6 Feb., France 11 Mar. US critics have showered it with praise; Metacritic rating 90%.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/sel.jpg
A flawed, moving, muted epic about Martin Luther King and civil rights marches, Alabama, 1965
Tremendously ambitious and yet in some ways modest and understated, Ava duVarney's Selma is a distinctive epic that avoids cliches (though not distortions) and is often beautiful to look at and moving. The scenes of the marches in Alabama, shot head on (by Bradford Young), are solemn and impressive, simply in themselves a profound celebration of the nobility of the common man and the bravery of the Sixties civil rights movement in America. Ava DuVernay, whose 2012 feature Middle of Nowhere (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3359-MIDDLE-OF-NOWHERE-(Ava-DuVernay-2012)&p=28664#post28664)was subtle and understated, has moved to something big and still maintained a certain quietness. She hasn't let the large scale overwhelm her or lead her into anything crude or flashy. In fact this picture is so restrained at times that we may forget it's in color.
The decision to confine the story to a three-month period in 1965 avoids unnecessary biopic rituals. Bloody and tumultuous though moments are here, this is a political procedural, and has been compared as such to Spielberg's Lincoln. The white British writer Paul Webb, who is responsible for the script, presents Dr. King as not so much a saintly orator as a shrewd strategist who consciously uses nonviolent protest and media awareness to highlight racist violence. As seen here, King stages the Selma and Selma to Montgomery marches on a courthouse and across a bridge to draw national and worldwide attention to the black struggle for the right to vote in the South. It's the remedy to an injustice beautifully embodied in a second prologue (the first is about King's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance) about the experience of Annie Lee Cooper (nobly played by Oprah Winfrey) and her doomed effort to register to vote. (Unfortunately the sequence of the three marches isn't made fully clear in the alternation of action scenes and strategy dialogues.)
Overall, events are schematically defined as a battle between Dr. King and President Johnson. LBJ wants to focus on his War on Poverty. He hasn't time at the moment, he insists, for voters' rights; but Dr. King can't wait. President Johnson was no saint, but he takes a serious beating ere, his role in opposing Martin Luther King emphasized at the expense of an actual presidential legacy in domestic social legislation rivaled by few other US presidents. Wilkinson's performance, and look, are cold and ugly, in scenes were he's attempting to bully Dr. King and conniving with J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker). Wilkinson, a powerful but not a subtle actor, is as cartoonish as Tim Roth here.
Some of the dialogues and encounters, between LBJ and his minions (Dylan Baker; the scrawny Giovanni Ribisi), between King and his fellow campaigners, or with his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo), are sometimes stiff, stolid, and slow. They show why Rex Reed found (http://observer.com/2014/12/wrapping-up-the-year-in-film/) the film too "somber," "muted," "understated" and "by-the-numbers" for his taste. Scott Founas of Variety (http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-selma-1201354433/) may be right that this would have become a "campy free-for-all" if the original director Lee Daniels had done the job. But a little of the juice Daniels injected into his The Butler might actually have helped.
In contrast, the physical events are classic, almost worthy of Sergei Eisenstein, or potentially so. The vulnerable, even elderly Negroes fallen on the bridge or in front of the court house steps may recall the Odessa Steps sequence of Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. And there is enormous depth in the casting of every minor role.
Ironically four of the principle actors are British, David Oyelowo as King, Ejogo as his wife, Tom Wilkinson as LBJ and Tim Roth as Governor George Wallace. This should not detract from the fact that there are some fine and actually far more vivid and real African American actors in other important, as well as minor, roles. It's also deeply ironic that we had to wait fifty years for an important movie about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King to be made; that it comes when the betrayal of that movement has never been more clear.
It's as an ensemble piece and as a solemnly quiet, small-scaled epic that Selma shines. In its specifics many will find fault with it -- the avoidance of much that is frank about Dr. King's home life or extramarital affairs, for instance. And it simply offers too little new or specific detail about the man, other than that his friends called him "Doc." And yet DuVernay maintains a kind of grandeur that is hard to explain; it's in the editing (by Spencer Averick), in the measured movement from one sequence to the next; in the soaring rap song at the end that brings the story into contemporary relevance. As one watches the brutality of the Klansmen and the southern white sheriffs and policemen, it's hard not to think of the heavily armed American urban cops of today and the constant killing of unarmed young black men by police who go free.
The events here are so powerful, and so long overdue in a major feature film, and DuVernay's restraint makes the presentation of them so impeccable, that one cannot but view Selma with awe and respect. Nonetheless, despite the film's distinction, it would be unjust not also to recognize the places where it falls short. But whether or not it's one of the very best films of the year, it's certainly one of the most important ones.
Selma, 128 mins., had limited US release 25 December 2014 after an AFI 9 Dec. debut. Wide release 9 January 2015. UK 6 Feb., France 11 Mar. US critics have showered it with praise; Metacritic rating 90%.