2 hrs & 8 min,
color, 2014
It
has been a half century this year since the events so boldly depicted in
“Selma” occurred, the march from Selma, Alabama to the courthouse in the state
capitol of Montgomery (in 1965) in which hundreds participated and which broke
open the case for voting rights for racial minorities in this country. It was the catalyst for legislation
inaugurated a few weeks later by President Lyndon Johnson known as the Voting
Rights Act. But I am trying to think
ahead about how the movie might be regarded after another fifty years when most
of us have passed on. For those who pull
it off the shelf then and watch it – our children and children’s children – I
wonder how it will settle upon their minds and hearts. Will the Selma events be given a Centennial
as stirring as the half century observance has been, or will the ardor have
cooled with the passage of time?
I
would not call it an intense fear that I am undergoing around this question;
call it more a qualm. The remnants of
the Jim Crow doctrine, at least implicitly, have not been completely stamped
out in our nation, as certain happenings in the news have recently made
evident. So many who have taken to the
streets of late in a mode of violence and destruction have created,
unintentionally perhaps, a bitter and maybe lingering taste in the mouth of
lawmakers and rank and file citizens over the prospect of overt protest, even
the non-violent variety, which Martin Luther King exercised in his conduct of
that landmark march. There were peaceful
protesters at work in Baltimore this past month while rioting was taking place,
but from where I sit it appears that their work was upstaged by those who hollered
and threw stones and broke glass.
It
was not only brave of Director Ava DuVernay to include the harshest moments in
the story but it was fitting. The days
before the final march on the capitol occurred under the watchful eye and the
protection of the U.S. Government were those of tremendous fear and tension and
anxiety and pain. Those brave souls were
gambling with their lives, a few of which were eventually required. They were walking into a toxic nest of hate
and militarized enforcement of a brutal law – a law of not only segregation but
of humiliation and systematic dehumanization by the state and local authorities
– authorities authorized to crush a peaceful rebellion at any cost and with
extreme impunity.
Inevitably
the nightstick played a major part in the oppression. I was braced for what I had heard on screen
before and knew was coming – the cracking of skulls, the skulls of unarmed men
and women who meant no harm. I looked up
Nightstick on-line and learned that it had its origin somewhere around the
midpoint of the 19th century.
It has been called by various names – a cosh, billy stick, billy club,
truncheon, cudgel, even baton (apparently before that term was humanized by its
use as the scepter carried by drum majors and majorettes in marching
bands). They are made of either plastic,
rubber or (the imaginably worst of all) hard wood, or a combination of two or
more of these. You can order one
on-line, and they come in various styles and at varied prices, but each and
every entry I scanned referred to it as an implement used by police. Give me teargas before having to go up
against one of those diabolical rods.
Yes, “Selma” is a commemorative motion picture but one in which we are
not spared the grim details. It is bound
to be an emotional experience for anyone who sees it. The only film I have seen that would top it
for being more disturbing and gut grabbing is “12 Years a Slave”, reviewed by
me on this blog a year ago.
Naturally
it is upsetting for those of us who believe in equality of the races and
champion those who fight for its recognition on the front lines of social
justice. It is upsetting for all of us
who consider those brave marchers to be spiritual kin and forebears. Even those who have mixed feelings about King’s
methods and the choices he made in tight spots cannot help but be disturbed by
the raw brutality that was practiced against his followers. The line that divides decency from indecency
was crossed, maliciously, and that should be enough to capture the sympathy of
all decent folk. But the film should
also be disturbing and unsettling for even the most flagrant racists, though
for the opposite reasons. There is
something in the racist mentality that recoils violently against being
outwitted by any crusader for rights they would like to see denied. Watching one of their hated enemies triumph
should be enough to boil their blood.
And blood did boil on the day of the first attempt at a march.
But
violent moments are not the only ones in “Selma” that disturb and
penetrate. Early in the footage we walk
with a real life black woman named Annie Cooper, played with restrained dignity
by Oprah Winfrey, as she proceeds by herself into the Montgomery courthouse and
submits her application for voter registration.
She is not accosted physically but is emotionally browbeaten by the
clerk, who asks her ridiculous questions that he would never think to ask a
white person, ones she of course cannot answer, her lack of information serving
as his excuse to deny her application, and he takes obvious delight in
humiliating her. It is a quiet
encounter, but it seethes with high minded bigotry and malice.
There
is a moment in the Selma jail cell between King (David Oyelowo), Ralph
Abernathy (Colman Domingo) and others of his compatriots, after Sheriff Jim
Clark arrests them, that is almost creepy.
The cell is so dark that it takes the cinematographer’s finesse for us
to see any of their faces, even in profile.
They speak in the lowest of tones, contemplating their fate, knowing
that the cell is bugged. King is
worried; someone in that darknes responds by reminding him that the prize they
seek requires commitment to building a path, “rock by rock.” That would surely be a difficult idea for
anyone to grasp and hold onto, while a prisoner deprived of all mobility.
An
even more sobering conversation takes place quietly and privately between King
and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo), wherein she opens up her bag of
worries. She is supportive of his cause,
but she trembles at the “cloud of death” hanging over them “like a thick
fog.” (Of course in hindsight we know
just how close death really was; that fear was justified beyond all
imagining.) J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan
Baker), convinced that King is “a moral degenerate” who must be destroyed,
makes a significant contribution to the couple’s torment with his anonymous
threatening phone calls.
Coretta
confesses her own insecurity, which assaults her much more when she is alone,
when he is out of town. With superbly
controlled energy the actress gives life to this woman not heard from all that
much in public, and Director DuVernay and Screenplay Writer Paul Webb give her
adequate time and space to do so. I do
hope we will be seeing more of Ejogo in future productions. She has a lot of presence.
As
some “in the know” have pointed out in the past months since the film’s
release, especially Andrew Young, who was witness to the interchanges between
Lyndon Johnson and King, there is one small but regrettable misrepresentation
that mars the film a bit. Tom Wilkinson
does a first rate job of embodying the President, but he is forced by the
script to make the man more defensive, reticent and slow to action than the
record will bear out. I agree that
Johnson’s career was horribly besmirched by his choice to start the Vietnam
War, but let us give him credit where credit is due. As a Southern politician he paid a big
political price for his brave stance on Voter Rights and racial equality.
The
film opens when King goes to Sweden to receive the Nobel Peace Prize followed
by a brief glimpse of the scene at the Alabama church in which four innocent
little black girls died when a bomb was detonated on a Sunday morning two years
before the Selma incidents. These two
brief happenings serve as a fitting foreword to the drama on the road that
follows. It is not long before King
sheds the ascot he was compelled to wear for that foreign occasion and gets
back into the trenches.
David
Oyelowo gives a shrewd and sensitive portrayal of the man. He has a grasp upon the way King spoke,
something of his verbal cadence and slow deliberate style, even when making an
impassioned speech. Yet he does this
without being self-consciously imitative of the man. My understanding is that he was not allowed
access to exact copies of King’s actual words.
But he did not need them.
And
finally comes the march that really made the difference, participated in not
just by local individuals but of teeming hundreds from across the country who
answered King’s appeal for participation.
A day of transforming history! It
is a potent reminder that strength in numbers is not just a quaint trivial
saying but a working truth. Watching
those droves of peaceful advocates pouring onto that highway, of one mind in
pursuit of one clear purpose, is a movie moment of rare exaltation of
spirit. The filming of it, under the
archway of the real Edmund Pettus Bridge and on to the capitol itself could not
have been done with more technical competence and mixed with more fitting music
on the soundtrack. It is a splendid
intertwining of dramatization and old black and white footage from the actual
march in ’65. The rhythm and the verve
are wonderfully displayed. The whole
sequence feels like the bursting of anointing and healing oil onto our
heads. If future generations are not
moved by viewing the picture, it surely will not be the fault of its
makers. Bless you all for making it come
to past.
To
read other entries in my blog, please consult its website: enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the
blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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