Selma | Little White Lies

Sel­ma

05 Feb 2015 / Released: 06 Feb 2015

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Ava DuVernay

Starring Carmen Ejogo, David Oyelowo, and Tom Wilkinson

A Black man in a suit gesticulating and speaking passionately.
A Black man in a suit gesticulating and speaking passionately.
4

Anticipation.

The noise around Ava DuVernay’s film has become deafening.

5

Enjoyment.

A vital piece of work from an invigorating new voice. Oyelowo is a revelation.

5

In Retrospect.

DuVernay and Oyelowo announce themselves as major talents.

Sel­ma Now!” Ava DuVernay’s vital civ­il rights dra­ma is the film Mar­tin Luther King deserved.

Racial­ly-moti­vat­ed vio­lence per­pe­trat­ed by white, state-appoint­ed agents upon black civil­ians has swift­ly and trag­i­cal­ly become one of the defin­ing social trau­mas of the mod­ern age. Direc­tor Ava DuVernay’s dev­as­tat­ing dra­ma, Sel­ma, frames this prob­lem as a case of his­to­ry in chron­ic rev­o­lu­tion, though the film’s time­li­ness only enhances its pow­er as a sophis­ti­cat­ed, rig­or­ous and unsen­ti­men­tal inves­ti­ga­tion into how vio­lence is allowed to flour­ish through bureau­crat­ic insti­tu­tions rather than big­ot­ed communities.

Yet Sel­ma would pass as a great movie what­ev­er the cur­rent news agen­da, as it explores issues of uni­ver­sal import such as the nuances of pop­u­lar protest, the media as a tool for polit­i­cal dis­sem­i­na­tion, how rhetoric can be trans­formed into action, and the fact that rad­i­cal change will only like­ly be achieved by wad­ing through pools of hot blood.

The film charts the indi­rect stand-off between the black denizens of Sel­ma, Alaba­ma who, in 1964, have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly denied vot­ing rights by white oppres­sors, and Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son (Tom Wilkin­son) who refus­es to sign-off laws which would strike out intim­i­da­tion and (final­ly) give a demo­c­ra­t­ic voice to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive major­i­ty regard­less of skin colour. Key to its suc­cess is that despite chron­i­cling real events, Sel­ma is not a biopic. David Oyelowo scin­til­lates as Dr Mar­tin Luther King Jr, per­fect­ly emu­lat­ing the hard, rolling Hs’ as well as the lilt­ing, latent musi­cal­i­ty of his speech pat­terns while nev­er com­ing across like a over­ly-stud­ied col­lec­tion of care­ful­ly imi­tat­ed char­ac­ter tics.

The numer­ous pas­sages in which MLK orates to a con­gre­ga­tion in Sel­ma match (if not quite tran­scend) the inten­si­ty of sim­i­lar scenes deliv­ered by Den­zel Wash­ing­ton in Spike Lee’s com­pa­ra­ble 1992 epic, Mal­colm X. There is a beau­ti­ful con­sis­ten­cy to Oyelowo’s per­for­mance, espe­cial­ly in the del­i­cate tonal over­lap between King’s pri­vate and pub­lic per­sonas. Part of the film’s poten­cy derives from the fact that DuVer­nay, Oyelowo and co-writer Paul Webb opt against mak­ing King the sub­ject of the film, instead plac­ing him as a guid­ing fig­ure whose deci­sions exert a pro­found effect on his­to­ry. Dis­course is the sub­ject. Oblig­a­tion in the sub­ject. Sel­ma is the subject.

The film is broad­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry of King’s suc­cess­es with­out ever erring into taste­less tri­umphal­ism or sug­gest­ing that these vic­to­ries will have direct ram­i­fi­ca­tions in the dis­tant future. King is not lionised — far from it. Indeed, the ener­gy and hope inferred by the finale, which sees King lead a civ­il rights march from Sel­ma to the Alaba­ma State Capi­tol in Mont­gomery, is dulled if not reversed by the knowl­edge that the results of his good work were tran­si­to­ry at best.

Sel­ma has few com­fort­ing words for those with ret­ro­grade atti­tudes, such as ol’ boy Alaba­ma gov­er­nor George Wal­lace (Tim Roth), though in the spir­it of its sub­ject, refrains from paint­ing these racists as stock hate fig­ures. Though it sees no occa­sion for humour (per­haps right­ly so), the film comes across as a spir­i­tu­al descen­dent to one of John Ford’s civic fables such as Young Mr Lin­coln or The Sun Shines Bright, which is high praise indeed.

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