"Selma"

I wanted to like Selma, even as its fans' overemphasis on the need for more diversity in the Oscars and the importance of its subject matter over specifics on its artistic merits invited caution. Certainly, the fundamental goal behind its narrative is a worthy one: To correct the Civil Rights movement’s sanitized popular image by reminding audiences of its necessary provocations towards a white supremacist power whose violent responses provided catalysts for genuine change. This would suggest a smart, subtle film; one whose capacity to open its audience’s eyes before they realize it would be matched by an able balancing of different participants’ experiences of the same movement. A kind of more radical, black-centered Lincoln if you will.

Sadly, while containing a pitch-perfect lead performance by David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King and an excellent turn by Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King (her second after Clark Johnson’s TV film Boycott, unseen by me as of this review), Selma simply fails to escape the usual trappings that come with Important Issue Movies: Clumsy audience manipulation through soppy piano music, cartoon characterizations (the usually fine Tim Roth is disastrously miscast as the most false and artificial George Wallace imaginable), scenes of historical importance presented and staged like obligatory courtesies rather than something out of which heart and substance may be extracted (the courthouse scenes with Martin Sheen's Judge Frank Minis Johnson and Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Fred Gray come to mind) and a colour palette that alternates between bland semi-saturation and an invasion of yellow. That's not even going into the obviousness with which the screenplay checks off plot beats like items from a grocery list: Moment where King is about to give up? Check. Heartfelt monologue from John Lewis about how he inspired him after a bad racist beating that, in turn, inspires him to carry on? Check.

I referenced Lincoln earlier because, in spite of the deplorable absence of important black abolitionist figures such as Frederick Douglass, Steven Spielberg’s 2012 political thriller managed to revere Lincoln without occulting his more ruthless side and fleshed out every supporting player’s position and personality without losing focus. There is precious little balance to be found here; for a film so unequivocal in its affirmed desire to examine the process of political activism, there is a distinct lack of a sense of community in Paul Webb’s screenplay as well as DuVernay’s direction. Notable Civil Rights figures such as Bayard Rustin, Diane Nash and the later-disgraced James Bevel¹ feature in many scenes but are never given any time to truly emerge as voices of their own and serve as little more than glorified extras to highlight the Kings’ traits. King himself owes most of his depth to Oyelowo’s fully-committed performance, and while the film does try to paint a nuanced and complex portrait of him, his character arc is too closely aligned with that of a typical Campbellian hero to ring true.

On the Facebook post that constituted my original short-form review, I had said that the controversy over Ava DuVernay’s lack of Oscar nomination for Best Director had no reason to be, as better western black films such as Dear White People and Belle had also been overlooked. I would like to clarify that statement: While I still believe that Ava DuVernay did not deserve an Oscar nomination for Best Director, I do not believe that she was overlooked on lack of merit alone, though that may have been my initial unconscious assumption. Indeed, the fact that her relatively safe, academic stylistic choices bear the hallmarks of the kind of direction older Oscar voters love makes her omission all the more glaring. It is therefore more than likely that some voters were held back by likely-unconscious prejudice against black female directors.

My larger point was that, of all the black films that came out in 2014, Selma should not have been the one to become a representative of sorts. I have not, as of this review, seen any of Ava DuVernay’s other films but I do intend to do so in the future. Selma suggests her to be a decent filmmaker, but one who doesn’t seem able to rise above directorial clichés and whose staging of police violence – aside from an inspired moment where the camera seems attached to Amelia Boynton Robinson’s torso as she falls to the ground on her back – lacks punch. There is, however, an intriguingly provocative idea to be found in her narrative framing: Almost every new scene is introduced with a subtitle indicating the time and place, typed in such a way as to evoke the FBI wiretappings King was subjected to throughout his political activities. Had DuVernay gone a little easier on the drums and trumpets of “prestige pics”, she might have used that device to hint at a challenge of the dominant white prism through which King and the Civil Rights movement are still seen and recuperated, a way of saying “We know you’re watching us, but we’re not going to give you the show you’re expecting.” Regrettably, Selma, at best, still remains half the show one expects from Hollywood.

These are all, admittedly, the opinions of a relatively privileged white man whose primary interest lies in cinema as an art form more than as a tool to awaken political conscience. I’m very glad a film about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement directed by a black person has garnered such attention. I just wish it were a film whose narrative was more concerned with portraying the Civil Rights movement as a collective action rather than as largely dependent on one man, and whose form matched its subject’s savvy radicalism.

¹A Christian pacifist whose role in the Civil Rights movement was eclipsed later in his life by accusations of incestuous sexual abuse that eventually led to his imprisonment.