Selma (2014): BlackVotesMatter

It can be tricky to critically evaluate a film where it is about a morally or politically charged topic, and this is particularly so where the subject at hand is race. How far does the imperative to be (or at least sound) politically correct affect one’s judgment? To what extent are public assessments influenced by what one is supposed to feel, by social expectations rather than an honest emotional response to the motion picture in question? With Selma, given its particular historical subject - the 1965 civil rights/voting rights protests in Selma, Alabama - the task is harder still, because the events have taken on such a hallowed quality – the nobility and righteousness of the cause, the triumph of freedom, and the defeat of racism, all of which tie into our national belief in the inevitability of social progress. The protagonists of this particular story, most particularly Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, who led the protests and marches in Selma, have become secular American saints.

I know that I am susceptible to the pressure of such expectations. That said, measuring Selma solely on its cinematic merits, I can fairly say that this is a well made, wonderfully acted, absorbing and sometimes heart-rending and stirring dramatic film. In its depiction of the deep South in the mid-1960’s, the movie accurately captures a time, a place, and a culture of racism so starkly different from our own that it’s hard to believe it existed a mere half century ago in our country.

But let’s not kid ourselves, a film such as this can’t and shouldn’t be evaluated in a cultural, political  

or historical vacuum. Selma is intended, I think, to be an “Important” film, as well as an entertaining one; and although time will tell, it seems to me to be worthy of such a mantel. It is certainly timely, arriving nearly fifty years after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which the events in Selma helped to spawn and pass; and just a couple of years after SCOTUS eviscerated major portions of that law, on the ground that racially motivated laws impeding voting rights in the deep South were no longer a constitutionally justifiable problem. (Really?)

I was fifteen years old when the events portrayed in Selma were occurring, at that time of life when I was uniquely susceptible to outrage at social injustice. The Civil Rights movement had been in full swing for a number of years. Two years earlier, in 1962, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi, amidst such massive and violent protests by the white community that federal troops had to be brought in. In the spring of 1963, massive anti-segregation protests in Alabama, brought the infamous “Bull” Connor, Birmingham’s racist police commissioner, to our consciousness and brought images of peaceable black protestors being washed down Birmingham streets by powerful fire hoses and attacked by police dogs to our TV screens. A couple months later, in Jackson, Mississippi, NAACP leader Medgar Evers was shot down in front of his home. [Two separate all white Mississippi juries refused to convict his killer the following year.] Then in August 1963, there was the powerful March on Washington attended by upwards of a quarter million people, during which MLK rang it out his “I Have A Dream” speech. In September 1963, four young girls were killed while at Sunday school by a terrorist bomb at a black Baptist church in Birmingham, shocking the nation (again).

Protest songs were stirring young people on college campuses, some of which even made their way down to high school freshman like me: If I Had a Hammer (“I’d hammer out justice, I’d hammer out freedom”), Blowin’ in the Wind, We Shall Overcome, and the like. From my Pennsylvania vantage point, I watched, appalled as this stuff was happening. Now, from my comfortable twenty-first century vantage point, it’s hard for me to believe that these things occurred and that these attitudes obtained in my lifetime, though I know it to be true. It must be harder still for younger generations, for which these events are mere history, to understand. That’s one reason a film like Selma is important.

By 1964, the focus of civil rights activists was on obtaining and securing voting rights for the millions of black Americans who had systematically been excluded from the franchise in the South by poll taxes, literacy tests, and other “legal” impediments, as well as by equally effective but less formal abuse, including violence, intimidation, loss of employment, and so forth. That summer, thousands of Northern college students, mostly white, descended on Mississippi, in an initiative known as Freedom Summer, to register black voters.  At the start of that campaign, three young volunteers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, two white and one black, were abducted and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, garnering national headlines. During the course of that summer, more than 1000 of their compatriots were arrested, many of them beaten, and nearly seventy homes and churches were burned by, shall we say, advocates of the status quo.  At the end of 1964, with this context, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference  (SCLC) and its leader Martin Luther King Jr, were invited to Selma by local organizers, to help press for voting rights there.

One of the major merits of the movie, Selma, is that it realistically brings this history to life, makes it tangible and real.  It captures the look, the tone, the mood and the attitudes of the time perfectly, I think.  As to the events themselves, Selma seems to be historically accurate, at least generally. The events were certainly dramatic and the movie renders that drama realistically and movingly. 

King and his group knew that so long as the state and local authorities were in charge, they would  never allow African Americans to register to vote. Without black voters, those authorities would remain in power indefinitely.If change was to come, it would have to come from outside Alabama. The (virtually all white) Congress had just passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and could be expected to be complacent if not hostile to passing further civil rights laws at this point The SCLC leadership determined that the only way to procure a national voting rights bill was to galvanize American public opinion. This meant pressing the issue locally, forcing the local officials to react and show their true colors in front of a national audience. It had worked before. King banked on its working in Selma.  They would march from Selma to the state capital.  They anticipated a confrontation and they got one.

Selma doesn’t approach its subject from the outside. It takes us into the experience of black citizens who bravely made the effort to register, only to be threatened, humiliated  and rebuffed, time and again.  It takes us into the strategy sessions of the protest movement, its internal arguments, personality clashes, moral quandaries.

Most of all, Selma shows us Martin Luther King the man. Like Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), the film accomplishes this by focusing on one dramatic, pivotal and illustrative event. In 1965, we find Dr. King in his prime, a strategist balancing the risks and rewards of provocative action, a tough politician willing to go toe-to-toe with President Johnson, and a powerful orator able to galvanize his team and inspire the community.  It also gives us the flesh-and-blood Martin, struggling to overcome opposition, struggling with inner doubts, and struggling with the conflict between his calling and his personal life: with a wife concerned – reasonably under the circumstances – about his safety and the safety of their children, concerned about his frequent absences, his fidelity to their marriage, and an unfulfilled desire for a little quiet domesticity.

David Oyelowo is just terrific as MLK, in a nuanced performance that I found quite believable. Most amazing is how he captures the cadences and intonations of King’s oratory; his speeches were truly stirring.  Regrettably, Oyelowo was snubbed in 2015’s Oscar nominations (although the “best actor” field was particularly strong that year). In a much smaller, yet effective role, newcomer Carmen Ejogo, plays Coretta Scott King, touchingly and convincingly. Plus she bears a striking resemblance to the real-life Coretta. Tom Wilkerson is persuasive as LBJ, using his body to evince the man’s character, even though he does not truly resemble him. Interestingly, all of these actors are English, but carry off their respective American accents without a trace of Britishness.

The other actors are also fine. Oprah Winfrey has a smallish role as Annie Lee Cooper, Wendell Pierce is Hosea Williams, Stephan James plays John Lewis, Colman Domingo is Ralph Abernathy, Andre Holland inhabits the young Andrew Young, and the singer Common plays James Bevel. Dylan Baker plays a brittle and reactionary J. Edgar Hoover, while Tim Roth presents a nasty, racist Governor George Wallace.

This is director Ava DuVernay’s first feature film, but you wouldn’t know it. She has a sure hand throughout, drawing excellent performances from her cast, and keeping us interested from the first shocking racial terrorism through to the triumphant conclusion. She gives a nice balance to the picture, moving from the streets of Selma to King’s private discussions with his colleagues or with Coretta, to meetings at the White House, and back to the streets. The humiliation and powerlessness of local African Americans is demonstrated poignantly; as is the movement’s commitment to justice. At two and a half hours, the pacing is slow, but in my view appropriately so. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and voting rights were not achieved through a couple of quick speeches.

There has been criticism from some quarters of the movie’s portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson as an adversary to King and his demand that Johnson fast track federal voting rights legislation. I don’t know all the facts, and doubt that there is one objective truth to be found. However, from what I do know, it seems to me that the criticism is overblown. Understand that Selma has a point of view: that of the voting rights activists. Yet the film never portrays Johnson as anything but a civil rights partner and an ally of King.  King meets with him and speaks to him repeatedly, and while they don’t agree on tactics, the president is never depicted as a villain. In the specific circumstance of Selma, and King’s push for immediate action from the White House on voting rights, the president is shown urging patience, saying that he does not believe the time is propitious, and that he wants to move first on what eventually came to be called his “War on Poverty”. To the civil rights activists, patience in the face of injustice was not an option. So yes, in this sense LBJ’s position was an impediment. But they also believed Johnson would come around once public outrage was aroused; and King’s strategy was, in fact, to provoke that public response. The activists were correct. Once public opinion was in fact aroused, LBJ jumped in with both feet to get the Voting Rights Act passed. 

As I have said, this movie is important and timely. Racial injustice is far from a thing of the past.

Recent killings of unarmed black men (Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin) by white police officers or wannabe cops have gone uncharged or resulted in acquittals. Educational and economic inequality based on color and ethnicity remains inexcusably high.  The ability of minorities to register and vote is subject to ongoing and increasing impediments in many jurisdictions. Racially suspect gerrymandering aimed at limiting the political power of African American voters in the South and of Latino voters elsewhere is still common, notwithstanding the naïve contrary conclusions of our Supreme Court.

Selma is engaging, inspiring and emotionally resonant as a historical drama. Here’s hoping that some of that resonance inspires the present.

In wide release when this review was written, Selma is now widely available from streaming services, such as Amazon [free with Amazon Prime.] and on DVD from Netflix.

BTW, for a terrific movie about 1964's Freedom Summer initiative, I strongly recommend the PBS American Experience documentary 'Freedom Summer" - free on Youtube, and available from other streaming services.