Selma (2014; dir. Ava DuVernay) features as main characters people who actually lived and who in some cases are still alive. I lived through and paid much attention to the Civil Rights movements and its leaders. I know the faces of M. L. King, Ralph David Abernathy, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, John Lewis, and others. It was jarring in this film to see these figures played by actors who at best only slightly resembled them. I often struggled to identify them. This was a distraction, but not something the film could help. Eventually I recognized that the actor in overalls was Hosea Williams and that the man with thick-rimmed glasses played Abernathy. David Oyelowo’s work as King is excellent, and especially in the speeches he made he became a convincing simulacrum of the original.
Selma powerfully depicts the events leading up to and surrounding the march on Selma. It’s clear, I think, that one of the purposes of the film is to remind viewers of the sacrifices and risks made by the many participants in the movement, and to pay tribute to its leaders. The movie presents them as heroes, and that is what they were. But it also portrays them as human beings.
The film’s intelligence is reflected both in the three-dimensional portrayals of King and his wife Coretta and in how it shows King and others in the movement strategically planning the Selma march in order to bring the greatest amount of national attention. King is shown both as determined and hesitant, and when during the second march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge he pauses and then turns back, he receives much criticism from his supporters. This moment of apparent retreat is never fully explained. We hear various people attempt to understand it. King himself tries to explain it as the result of his concern for the people who might be injured if the gathered police decide to attack. Most importantly this moment contributes to the humanity and mystery of King as he is portrayed in the film. He is rightly regarded as a man of moral vision—we see this aspect clearly--but the film also shows him also as a politician and a strategist. It also shows him as a husband and father. A short scene in the film alludes to his affairs with women, and to the unhappiness this caused in his marriage to Coretta. It shows as well his anxieties over the welfare of his family, especially given how his leadership in the movement made him a target for violence.
Several scenes show the brutal abuse of Civil Rights protestors by white Southerners. The central scene is in the first march on the Pettus bridge, where police and gathered white crowds viciously attached the marchers. John Lewis’ skull was cracked. We see several murders and are told about others. It was painful to watch these scenes and tempting to view them as exaggerations. However, newsreel footage, photographs, and numerous reports from bystanders and participants make clear that these portrayals of violence and hate are accurate.
Malcolm X briefly appears in the film. He played a small role in the events surrounding the Selma march, and his inclusion was probably a gratuitous acknowledgement of a man who was King’s leading critic among African Americans during the early years of the 1960s, and whose activism represented an alternative approach to the nonviolent tactics of King’s strategy for working towards civil rights.
There are historical inaccuracies in the film. Many of them may be minor, but the portrayal of Lyndon Baines Johnson is a significant misrepresentation. Johnson was responsible for pushing both the Civil Rights bill and the Voting Rights act of 1965 through Congress. He was not an opponent of voting rights. At worst he and King differed over the timing of the bill. By the time of the events the film portrays, Johnson had already called for a voting rights bill to be drafted. Recordings and transcripts of public and private conversations and comments make clear his support for the voting rights bill. Selma makes out Johnson to be the opponent who must be convinced by the Selma march of the bill’s necessity. In fact, Johnson needed no convincing. Another issue is the omission of the 1964 Freedom Summer project, including the murders in Mississippi of three civil right workers. Those events together with the efforts of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation to be seated at the 1964 Democratic Convention did as much as the Selma March to galvanize support for the voting rights act and to bring about its passage.[1]
Although these are serious flaws, especially given the focus on a crucial moment in the Civil Rights movement, they do not ruin the film, which is a dramatic, inspiring, and moving tribute to King and other leaders of the movement.
[1] For various opinions see Elizabeth Drew, “’Selma’ vs. History,” The New York Review of Books, Jan. 8, 2015, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jan/08/selma-vs-history/; Ann Hornaday, “Film fact-checking is here to stay,” The Washington Post, Jan. 3, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/film-fact-checking-is-here-to-stay-so-lets-agree-on-some-new-rules/2015/01/02/9698f87c-92a6-11e4-ba53-a477d66580ed_story.html; Amy Davidson, “Why ‘Selma’ is More than Fair to L.B.J.,” The New Yorker, Jan. 22, 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/selma-fair-l-b-j; Bill Moyer, “Bill Moyers on LBJ and ‘Selma,’” http://billmoyers.com/2015/01/15/bill-moyers-selma-lbj/; Dee Lockett, “How Accurate is Selma?,” Slate, Dec. 24, 2014, http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/12/24/selma_fact_vs_fiction_how_true_ava_duvernay_s_new_movie_is_to_the_1965_marches.html
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