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| David Oyelowo as MLK and Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King |
Two Oscar Nominations
Best Picture
Music (Original Song)
Director Ava DuVernay
produces art that inspires, that rekindles that flame of outrage against
injustice that many of us feel and want to act on. This film is a phenomenal
historical drama and it really is a travesty that it is nominated in only two
categories - one of which is best original song. That astonishes me. Stop
treating black people as minstrels who are only here to entertain us. David
Oyelowo as Martin Luther King (MLK), Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, Tom
Wilkinson as Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ). All of them should have been nominated as
well as Ava DuVernay the director.
I am unsure if the film
was shot chronologically but Oyelowo, a Brit, appears to gather strength in his
characterization, sounding more and more like MLK as the film progresses. Ejogo
perfectly captures Coretta Scott King's particular brand of frosty beauty, cool-headness and
refinement.
The South is in turmoil in
1964. As its black citizens attempt to organize and protest for their civil
rights, they are increasingly under attack by belligerent, racist whites. The film begins with four small black girls
being murdered by a bomb blast in Birmingham, AL. On September 15, 1963, three
Klansmen planted nineteen sticks of dynamite outside the church they little girls worshipped in. The explosion
killed Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley
and Denise McNair and injured twenty two others.
King soon meets with Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) seeking
legislation to assist black citizens to register for voting without
impediments. Johnson stalls, citing other priorities such as the "war on poverty".
Wilkinson is impressive here, not so much imitating LBJ, whom he does not
resemble at all, but summing up the Southern piss and vinegar attitude that LBJ
was reputed to possess. It's not that LBJ is not a racist (he too refers to
blacks as "niggers") but he is a pragmatist. Things must change,
things will change, but at the appropriate time he seems to imply.
It has been suggested that
LBJ's role has been minimized or distorted in the film but the writer Amy Feldman refutes that
notion in a recent The New Yorker article.
King travels to Selma,
Alabama with an entourage of dedicated activists which includes Andrew Young, future
UN Ambassador and mayor of Atlanta. The problem of voter registration is particularly acute there. King and his followers, including Annie Lee Cooper
(played by Oprah Winfrey, one of the executive producers of the film), march
through Selma in defiance of the ruthless tactics of a Sheriff Jim Clark, a
vicious racist who resorts to extreme violence to suppress protests. They are beaten
and thrown to the ground despite their passive resistance. King and his
followers are arrested and incarcerated. They soon begin to organize a peaceful
march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Alabama's Governor George Wallace (played by a slithery, snarling Tim Roth) challenges King and vows that they
will not proceed. Johnson, too, is opposed to the march feeling that King is
trying to force his hand to create legislation that would end voter
discrimination. Gov. Wallace allows the state troopers to attack the marchers
during a night march on February 18, 1965. They brutally assault the marchers
and Jimmie Lee Jackson (Keith Stanfield), an activist and church deacon, is
beaten and shot to death during a struggle. At a eulogy for Jackson, MLK vows to
continue the march.
During the first march from
Selma to Montgomery, the protesters face armed troopers on the bridge. The
troopers begin to throw tear gas and beat the crowd with billy clubs. I can't
tell you how horrifying this re-enactment is on screen. Old men and women,
young teenagers, being clubbed, whipped, thrown to the ground, beaten about the
face. It's terrifying, absolutely excruciating, to watch. That the troopers
(and George Wallace) were foolish and vicious enough to proceed with these fascistic tactics while on camera, which is later broadcast nationally before a
horrified public, is inexplicable and demonstrates a pathological hatred of
black people.
There is one image of a
young girl, dressed in a white dress, running like a hunted gazelle from a state
trooper with a baton, that will be etched in my mind for a very long time.
President Johnson demands
that both King and Wallace stop their actions. He sends a representative to
meet with King to postpone the march. King refuses and tells him that, instead,
he should convince Wallace and Sheriff Clark to be non-violent. Inspired by the
vicious assaults they see on television, a number of white citizens come to
Selma to join the next march. This time, the state troopers step aside and no
violence occurs as the protesters kneel down and exhibit passive resistance. There is some thought that the
white marchers have somehow dissuaded the state troopers from attacking.
Afterwards, two white supporters are viciously assaulted and one, a Rev. James
Reeb an Unitarian minister, is murdered for joining the marchers.
King and his collaborators
are soon brought to court over the next march. The judge rules in favour of the
marchers. LBJ confronts Gov. Wallace who claims to have to control over
voter registration. Frustrated by Wallace's intransigence LBJ announces that he
will send a bill to Congress to eliminate the restrictions on the voting of
black citizens. The activists gather for the final march. DuVernay intersperses
actual footage from the march in the film. The ordinariness of the participants
breaks your heart. These are working people, students, the elderly and a few
notable ones - Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., etc ...
Five months later, LBJ
signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Martin Luther King, Jr. was there.
The film ends with an
update on the lives of those who participated in the marches:
Andrew Young, former UN
Ambassador and mayor of Atlanta.
George Wallace, paralysed
by a 1972 assassination attempt.
Sheriff Jim Clark defeated
by an overwhelming black electorate in the next election.
Viola Liuzzo, a white civil
rights activist, murdered by a Klansman hours after the march.
Coretta Scott King
established The King Center and campaigned for a holiday in her
husband's honor (celebrated the third Monday of January).
MLK, lead the civil rights
movement for thirteen years until he was murdered in 1968.
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