Selma

Selma is one of the greatest events in US history.

If they gave awards for landmarks and turning points in history, Selma would clean up.

But the recently released movie Selma - I was a little disappointed. 

Most critics raved about the movie, which tells the story of a few weeks in 1965 when Martin Luther King organized a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to bring national attention to the fact that blacks could not exercise their constitutional right to register to vote.

The critics' raves turned to outrage this week when the film was snubbed by the Oscar nominations.  It only received two nominations: best picture and best song.  Nothing for the impressive performances by David Oyelowo as King, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, or Ava DuVernay the director.

Racism was the obvious charge made against the predominately old, white, male members of the Academy of Motion Pictures who nominate and vote.  Every one of the 20 actors and actresses nominated are white.  All the directors nominated were white males.  Selma is directed by a black woman.

I wrote for these pages about the Selma march and another leader of the march, John Lewis, a couple years ago, on the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, which King also organized.  These various 50th anniversaries are inspiring lots of timely books, conferences, TV shows and a few movies about the Civil Rights Era.

Timely, because many of that generation of leaders has died and many young people simply don't know that history.  A program called "Selma for Students" has raised money so that teenage students in over 20 major cities, like New York, LA, Nashville, Detroit, can see the movie free; as many as 275,000 students are eligible.

Timely also, because Republicans today are trying to take us back to the day when it was hard if not impossible for poor minorities to vote.  Many states have reduced voting hours, required picture ID and closed polling places, all a hardship on the working poor.  The Supreme Court last year ruled that racism was over and removed Civil Rights Era watchdog provisions on some communities that have been egregious violators of voting rights, mostly in the south.

And timely, and ironic, because so many people today don't even bother to vote.  In the movie we see blacks and their white allies being tear gassed, attacked by dogs and even killed by police (sound familiar?) because they want a right, the vote, that so many now say is pointless.  Our last midterm election had the lowest turnout in history, and voters were predominately older and white.  Guess who got elected to congress?

So I was glad the movie was made.  I just wish it had been better.

Too much of it felt like a soap opera, or People Magazine.  Long, SLOW scenes about the tension in the King marriage.  Panning of Coretta's pained suffering face.  Subtle references to King's infidelities - to what end?  King accusing Coretta of liking Malcom X more than him.  King's doubts and despair.

I saw another biopic this month - The Theory of Everything, about Stephen Hawking, and I had the same complaint.  Another movie about the loneliness of the great man and the long suffering of the great man's wife.  And so little about what their greatness was about.  I admire Hawking no end, and especially his persistence over his devastating disease.  But the movie told me nothing about his ideas, nothing about "The Theory of Everything."  I felt like they didn't think the audience was interested or could get it.  We were only interested in how they managed to have  children.

Likewise we could have learned much more about King's ideas, strategies, influences (one fleeting shot of a portrait of Gandhi in his home), his background, his legacy.  It was King lite, King shallow.

I have seen other biopics like this, that show just a few years, or weeks in a person's life and have it stand for or symbolize the whole career.  The very fine film Lincoln used the same style, the focus was on one legislative battle.  And Lincoln certainly also had his doubts and some marital tensions. And an unfinished life.  But Lincoln seemed to me, surprisingly, to have more dramatic tension - would the amendment get passed, who would vote for it.  It was essentially a courtroom drama.

Maybe I didn't get caught up in this movie because I know the Selma story and how it ended. I've studied it and written about it. And I've heard about it from my husband, who in 1965 was a young Unitarian Universalist minister, and one of many white clergy who answered King's call for white supporters.  He went on a chartered flight from LA with other clergy and joined the last two days of the march into Montgomery.  It was interesting to watch the movie with him.  He knew the young white Boston UU minister, Charles Reeb, who was murdered by whites during the march.  He thought the portrayal pretty accurate.

But he was probably more disappointed than I was in the film, or at least sadder.  About what hasn't changed.  And what has gotten worse.  How we were left with really no hope, we know how it ends.

I did appreciate how the film portrayed King's faith, and that of Reeb also; their faith was complex, motivating, real, unlike so much of Hollywood's mocking people of faith as stupid or hateful.  There's a great scene where King kneels in prayer and changes his mind in a bold yet vulnerable way you don't see much in American men.

A weird note on the speeches King gives in the film - they weren't his real speeches, because his estate had already given (ie sold) to Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks the rights to use the text of King's speech in some other movie and they wouldn't give that up.  So the director wrote her own versions, using the same style and cadence of King.  They were moving, but I could tell something was missing. 

OK, so on reflection I'm glad the film was made. I'm glad I saw it.  I'd encourage folks to see it.  I'd vote for Oyelowo as best actor.  (Especially since he is British, as is Ejogo and the script writer.)  I'm glad all those teenage students are seeing it.  But I wonder if we like the movie because we like the idea of Selma more than we want to have to learn about all its complexities and realities and failures.  Selma and the Civil Rights Era are more than a soap opera and King was more than a lonely doubter. 

King had a dream.  This film wasn't a nightmare.  But it was sort of a long slow sometimes boring day dream.  We needed more.  And we need someone like King today.

Copyright © 2015 Deborah Streeter