SELMA: An Impressive Movement

Director: Ava DuVernay
Writer: Paul Webb
Cast: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Wendell Pierce, Common, Tom Wilkinson, Oprah Winfrey, Tim Roth
Runtime: 128 mins.
2014

I saw Selma a few weeks ago and tried to start a write-up, but nothing materialized. Then the Oscar nominations happened. Among the many reasons to be annoyed, perhaps the most pressing is the absence of Selma from all but a very few categories. No nods to Bradford Young for cinematography, no nods to Ava DuVernay for direction, not even a nod to David Oyelowo for what is clearly one of the most chameleonic performances of the year. I won't take any time now to complain about the Academy. Instead, watch this video interview with DuVernay in which she perfectly characterizes the issue in a matter of minutes.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/27/selma_director_ava_duvernay_on_hollywoods

In my reviews I typically like to dig into the minutiae of my positive and negative feelings toward a film, and connect that to a discussion of the quality, or at least the success of a film. Does the movie accomplish what it sets for itself to accomplish? Does it hinder itself, or trip over its own feet in any way? Criticism is a hard conversation for many reasons, foremost among them being the need to approach a work on its own merits, rather than what you as a subjective viewer want to see. Then there's the semantics of whether a film being good means it is important, or entertaining, or challenging, or airtight, or inspired, and so on. The simple and endlessly complex answer is: It just depends.


I walked out of Selma knowing for sure that I liked the movie, and feeling that I had a few problems with it swirling around in the miasma that happens before an idea comes to life. Both of these things hold true. After talking and thinking about the film, I managed to put my finger on a few specific issues I had with the screenplay, both on the level of dialogue and on the level of scope/narrative focus. In addition to that, I appreciated the visual language of the film, but found it a bit messy, or at least inconsistent. Some incredibly visceral visual sequences were followed by somewhat stodgy and awkward stagings. Blah blah blah henpeck henpeck henpeck.

The point is that the more time passed, the less I cared about any of these complaints. None of them come even close to being movie-breaking, and I forgive far greater faults in the genre fiction that I love. When it comes down to it, Selma is an amazing film that everyone should really try to see. Yes, everyone. It may not be the most exquisitely crafted film of the year (an accolade that clearly belongs to The Grand Budapest Hotel), but it may be the most important.

2014 has been an incredible year for cinema (as you'll see in my impending Top Fifteen movies of the year list). 2014 has not been an incredible year for, you know, most other things. Like race and gender equality on a social, cultural, and political level. In fact, it's been downright awful. 2014 may have been the year that spawned the most awareness about the racial inequality still rampant in America today since... well, since the Civil Rights Movement. That is why Selma, despite being a period piece set fifty years in our nation's past, manages to feel more contemporary and pertinent to our current cultural landscape than 99% of the other movies released this year. Like Mockingjay and Snowpiercer, Selma deals with big questions about revolution, except instead of draping these themes with a sci-fi setting, Selma plants itself square in our nation's history.

It's an incredible accomplishment. To make a movie about the injustices of the past that points its finger squarely at the present is a bold act. Most movies about slavery, the Holocaust, or any other historical atrocity shy away from that step and instead attribute the intolerance on display to the attitudes of the time. Selma does not do that. The whole of it feels eerily familiar. There is no central heroic white character who is amazingly not racist and decides to help all those destitute blacks, like you'll see in a majority of slavery-centric films. Maybe Selma got so snubbed because it isn't another Hey white people, feel good! movie. No, it's not a feel-good movie at all. It's a feel-proud movie. And a feel-angry movie. And a feel-like-our-job-is-not-finished movie.

I'm a completionist, so I will give this movie a numerical rating just like I've given every other movie on this blog. But for god's sake ignore the damned number and see Selma. And if the credits roll and anybody says to you something to the effect of, "Wow, I can't believe things were that awful fifty years ago!", take the time to explain to them calmly and empathetically that things weren't just bad fifty years ago--things are bad right now.

That's the point of Selma. It's not just a Great Man movie. It's better than that. It's a Great Movement movie. The movement has always been flawed, the movement has always been necessary, and the movement is still happening today.

3 / 5  BLOBS