Selma

Failure to accuse Caucasian officers in the murder of unarmed African men in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island has nothing and everything to do with “Selma,” Ava DuVernay’s 2014 challenging review into Martin Luther King Jr.’s landmark 1965 voting-rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery. The sad truth is that racial injustice is fitting than ever. Righteous anger is in the air, and that enthusiasm to stand up and be counted is all over “Selma.”

This is all towards the good. DuVernay, working from a terrific, strongly motivated script by Paul Webb, blows the dust off history to find the main core. Look at the problem facing King, played terrifically by British actor David Oyelowo: Black voters in the South are being intimidated, beaten and disqualified. Alabama Governor George Wallace, played by Tim Roth, likes it the Jim Crow Way. In the White House, Lyndon Johnson, played by Tom Wilkinson, “hems and haws,” according to Peter Travers. King had to take action. He thought a nonviolent march in Selma, where racism was at its peak, would create a media fury and force the president’s action.

King was right, but at serious cost. Inside the civil rights movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee hated his interruption. King expected push-back from supporters of violent action. However, in a meeting between Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch) and King’s wife, Coretta (Carmen Ejogo), a more surprising strategy comes up. Travers said, “Political gamesmanship is at play, and DuVernay shows how every hand gets dirty.”

There are no crowns in DuVernay’s film, and that reaches out to King. “Selma” isn’t a documentary – it celebrates community action – but in seeing King through the prism of one critical moment, the film gives a moving picture of a born preacher not without problems. Oyelowo’s emotive, sad performance deserves excellence. His delivery of King’s speeches, especially “How Long, Not Long,” rings with emotion. However, it’s in quite moments of humor heartbreak and severe uncertainty that we see man in the flesh. King and his wife talk about his cheatings with a twisting honesty that goes deep. Ejogo’s work is also enthusiastic and award-worthy. It’s ironic that Ejogo and Oyelowo are British, as are Wilkinson and Roth, but why complain when acting is this amazing?

On March 7^th, “Bloody Sunday,” black and white marchers are forced to turn around on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in front of police holding billy clubs. Later, a judge forces a treaty and the march continues. Travers said, “DuVernay and the gifted cinematographer Bradford Young, shooting in Alabama, achieve visceral wonders as we watch history forged in flesh and blood.”

Something that needs to be said about the real woman behind the Selma march: Oprah Winfrey, one of the film’s producers, is deeply moving as Annie Lee Cooper, a nurse who attacked a white sheriff for denying her right to vote. Lorraine Toussaint succeeds as Amelia Boynton, who is badly beaten on the march, and so does Tessa Thompson as Diane Nash, a silent hero of the movement.

Travers had noted, “Still, the woman of these two blistering hours is DuVernay, 42, a former publicist for the likes of Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood. Her second feature, 2012's Middle of Nowhere, made her the first African-American woman to win the Sundance award for directing.” In “Selma,” DuVernay’s talent is at the max. The collapse of an event that led to the path of the Voting Rights Bill in August 1965 is disobedient, especially in one film. However, nothing is going to stop DuVernay. In “Glory,” a song by Common and John Legend that ends the film, we hear the verse “That’s why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up… They say, ‘Stay down,’ and we stand up.” DuVernary’s historic film is a testament to those words. The struggle continues.

If you have never seen this movie, you are missing out. This is a must that you should see to understand the cruelty that African-Americans had gone through during the segregation period. You will feel bad without a doubt for all this trouble that no one even deserved but just because they were different, they were treated like dirt.

Well, that ends “Black History Movie Month Part 4.” I hope that I made some good recommendations this month for everyone to check out. Look out for more exciting reviews next month.