Directed by Ava Duvernay
Starring David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Tessa Thompson, Common, Tim Roth, Lorraine Toussaint, Oprah Winfrey, Wendell Pierce, Giovanni Ribisi
First off: Ava Duvernay and David Oyelowo were robbed when the Academy Award nominations were announced this past week and they did not receive recognition.
I find the snubbing of Ms. Duvernay especially egregious because what she has done with the writing and direction of this film is a feat of artistic excellence. Selma has been nominated in the Best Picture category, with its John Legend/Common anthem "Glory" competing as Best Song. Very rarely does a film win Best Picture without an Oscar nomination also going to its director (though the Best Picture has been won without its director also winning; two years ago Argo won Best Picture, but director Ben Affleck wasn't nominated).
Setting out to portray the life of a revered and historic icon on screen can be a harrowing endeavor. It is universally recognized that Martin Luther King Jr.'s approach to attaining civil rights for people of color in the U.S. was pioneering, audacious, brave, noble and indelible. His tactics proved effective in shedding light on longstanding injustices and in gaining a measure of equality before the law. He gave his life to the struggle. As such, the example of MLK has become a story for the ages, a brilliant and complicated man who came to be seen as a martyr for all African Americans and others suffering under the yoke of inequality in this country. His legend has been told countless times, on the big screen and in television movies that impress upon audiences the greatness of King's travails.
The brilliance of Selma is that the movie refrains from painting Martin as a superman who singlehandedly strikes a blow for freedom. This is a beautifully conceived, carefully reconstructed set piece in which King is presented as a very human figure confronting an entrenched way of life in the South and an intractable political system, doing so through the coordinated efforts of a team of strategists and the support of everyday people.
What Ava Duvernay does brilliantly is breathe life, wit, and soul into the figure of King, and capture him during one of the pivotal episodes of the civil rights crusade, the march from Selma to Montgomery. Actor David Oyelowo embodies this King brilliantly: Not as a caricature or an imitation, but presenting him as a man with a heartbeat committed to a compelling cause but beset by detractors and a range of conflicting emotions, including the real awareness that his mission is a danger to everyone involved.
There are moments of discomfort in watching Selma, as when we are reminded of the horrors of the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church that took the lives of four little girls, the terror and violence of Selma's police action against African American protestors, and the stinging indignities of Southern Jim Crow racism. But the film must remind us of those realities to present a full understanding of what King and the movement had to push against. And yet this is not a preachy film; it is a carefully rendered story about this episode in the fight for justice, told in a way that taps into the deepest emotions of every viewer. That is truly the power of the film, its humanity.
While a nod from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences would have been thrilling, Oscar should not be the final arbiter of the merit of this film. It is whether it is remembered, viewed over and over, and valued within the culture that gave rise to it. We know of many Oscar winners that have been forgotten.
Remember Selma.
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