The single
most eye-opening moment of my college experience came during the first semester
of my freshman year. Most of the students in my Honors 101: Research Methods
class despised our teacher for reasons both justified (her clinical, DIY
approach to teaching suggested she was more accustomed to dealing with grad
students than fresh-faced undergrads) and not (somehow I don’t think they
would’ve been so openly disdainful and disrespectful had she been a white man
instead of a black woman). At one point, our class discussion turned to Rosa
Parks and the Civil Rights Movement, and my professor told a room full of
primarily privileged white kids that Rosa Parks was not just an ordinary lady
who one day got too tired to stand up from her seat on a bus, but an outspoken,
trained and educated activist. As minor as it might have seemed at the time,
this moment forever changed how I view history, especially as it is taught in
the American education system, where reality is often simplified, distorted or
outright ignored in order to create easily digestible, comforting narratives. For
the first time, I truly grasped the full meaning of the truism “History is
written by the victors”, though it might be more accurate to say “History is
written by the powerful”.
So, this was the challenge that
faced director Ava DuVernay and the rest of her team when making Selma: how do you translate Martin
Luther King Jr. and his work to the big screen while countering a dominant
cultural narrative that has long reduced him to a docile saint? On top of that,
the film must also compete with the feel-good white savior stories that have
served for decades as Hollywood’s main framework for dealing with issues of
race. It’s a formidable responsibility to tackle for the industry as a whole,
let alone a single project. Yet, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the
final film is how lightly it carries this weight, never bowing under pressure
or coming across as either self-conscious or self-important. Selma may be closer to the glossy,
polite dignity of Spielberg’s Lincoln
than the ferocious rawness of Spike Lee’s Do
the Right Thing, which still stands after 25 years as mainstream cinema’s
sharpest, most honest commentary on American race relations, but it’s a piece
of lean, effective, confident filmmaking that, along with the more unassuming
yet equally poignant Middle of Nowhere,
establishes DuVernay as one of the most exciting and vital voices in the
contemporary movie world.
Beyond any social or political
significance that it has, Selma is
simply a skillfully crafted film. DuVernay plunges viewers straight into the
world of 1965 Selma, Alabama, denying them the comfort of distance and instead imbuing
each scene with a real sense of urgency. Exposition is limited, and editor
Spenser Averick keeps the pacing brisk without ever making it feel rushed. The
filmmakers suggest immediacy without relying on a shaky, handheld camera, which
has recently become cliché cinematic shorthand for “this is real”. If the movie
never quite delves deeply enough into the psyches of Dr. King and his fellow
activists, it’s because it seems more interested in letting events unfold
unencumbered by more personal flourishes, focusing more closely on their
actions and their roles in a larger social movement than on their thoughts or lives
as individuals. Though King undeniably takes center stage, Selma is less effective as a biopic than as a depiction of the
time, effort, passion and risk that goes into organizing and making even the
most incremental political change. As harrowing and tense as the protest and
march scenes framed so eloquently by cinematographer Bradford Young are, the
film is most compelling during King’s speech scenes, buoyed by David Oyelowo’s riveting,
charismatic presence, and whenever Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo, who
manages to be so memorable and do so much with so little) comes onscreen. By
contrast, despite a solid though unexceptional performance by Tom Wilkinson as
President Lyndon B. Johnson and an appropriately snaky Tim Roth, complete with
an oily Southern accent, as George Wallace, the proceedings feel noticeably
more rote whenever the scope expands beyond the confines of the titular town.
I wanted very much to avoid
talking about the ludicrous “controversy” that has swirled around Selma’s treatment of LBJ, but the
character proved so key to the film’s narrative that it seems almost disingenuous
to not at least mention the furor, if only to promptly dismiss it. To summarize
the whole hullabaloo, certain commentators have decried the movie for
misrepresenting the president’s attitude toward King’s work in Selma and for
essentially tarnishing his legacy (as though that’s the most important thing at stake here). While their claims
sounded specious and beside the point, since DuVernay was under no obligation
to make her narrative film a painstakingly accurate historical record, the
actual film renders them completely moot not only because it seems to hew
fairly closely to the real-life events, but also because it does very little to
demonize Johnson. In fact, aside from a scene with J. Edgar Hoover that’s
miscalculated primarily because it’s unnecessary, he turns out to be the hero.
In addition to giving him the spotlight during the climax, the story pivots on
his character arc as he goes from treating civil rights as a nuisance he wishes
would disappear to proposing the legislation that would become the Voting
Rights Act (1965) to Congress. None of this is necessarily bad, of course, but
it’s a little odd that, in the rare movie that shows genuine respect for black
civil rights activists and lets them feel like flesh-and-blood human beings,
the distinguished white guy still happens to be the only character who undergoes
a discernible change.
The truth is that the majority
of the things I’d criticize Selma for
stem from the fact that it’s easy to imagine five or six different yet equally
interesting movies being made from essentially the same material, all of them
with a variety of perspectives. For example, I wish it brought female activists
more to the forefront; Coretta’s main role is as a wife and mother, while Diane
Nash appears but barely gets anything to say or do. I wish it wasn’t so
dismissive of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) and other non-MLK-affiliated
organizations’ contributions, and while the film nicely explored some of the
internal conflicts within the movement, I would’ve liked to see it highlight
the class divide between King and the rest of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) board and much of the black populace in Selma, Alabama. I sincerely
look forward to getting a film that examines King more closely and uncovers the
private person behind the public persona. It goes without saying, though, that I
can’t really ding the filmmakers for not telling different stories, especially
when, on the whole, they tell the one they chose so well; if anything, it’s the
fault of an industry that for so long has neglected to tell narratives about
race relations with any real substance, thereby placing greater expectations on
the few such projects that have managed to claw their way into existence.
I can also envision an alternate version of Selma that’s darker with a more ambiguous and troubled ending, but
DuVernay and co. instead opt for uplift. Rather than focusing ponderously on
what has or hasn’t changed since Selma and the Voting Rights Act, they used the
past to hopefully inspire a better future and fashioned their retelling of a
small but crucial chapter in the 1960s civil rights movement into a galvanizing
call to action.
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