Selma film review

Selma Review: An important historic drama about a landmark in the Civil Rights Movement

Selma directed by Ava DuVernay, starring British acclaimed actor David Oyelowo, 39 as Martin Luther King and Carmen Ejogo, 41 as his wife. Produced by among others Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt, is a movie that is made to move, shake and make an impression.

Selma focuses on a crucial moment in the U.S. civil rights movement during 1965 and is released on the 50th anniversary of the nominal march from Selma to Montgomery, the march greatly helped raise awareness of the difficulty faced by black voters in the South, and the need for a Voting Rights Act, passed later that year.

It has been nominated for the Oscar in the category of best picture and best original song, “Glory” which will be performed by John Stephens (a.k.a. John Legend) and Lonnie Lynn (a.k.a. Common) at the Oscar ceremony, they also pick up a Golden Globe for the music, and it has already been named the best film of the year by the African-American Film Critics Association.

In his Golden Globe acceptance speech, rapper and actor Common on why the the film is so important: “The first day I stepped on the set of Selma I began to feel like this was bigger than a movie. As I got to know the people of the Civil Rights Movement, I realised I am the hopeful black woman who was denied her right to vote. I am the caring white supporter killed on the front lines of freedom. I am the unarmed black kid who maybe needed a hand, but instead was given a bullet. I am the two fallen police officers murdered in the line of duty. Selma has awakened my humanity.”

With all this in view its hard to look at Selma as any other biopic, it cannot and must not be removed from its activist raison d’aitre. As Guardians Steve Rose puts it “Perhaps that’s the price of handling big, important episodes of history: it’s almost impossible to take risks or put a personal stamp on them. There’s too much to honour and do justice to”.
The film is a great effort, the acting is of the brilliant kind, while some of it feels to campaign like and at times it is very sentimental, I left the screening very moved and more aware of this bit of crucial history. Although it shouldn’t be treated as a historical documentary, African American director Ava DuVernay has received criticism by U.S scholars about historical details, especially in how it treats the legacy of President Lyndon Johnson, and how the depiction of Coretta Scott King. Selma sits firmly in the dramatized version of history and is so much more powerful for it. Even with a person like King who’s telephone was tapped by the FBI and who’s life has been chronicled in so many ways, you can never know for sure what he thought in his own head. It’s in the intimate scenes between King and his wife and children that much of the strength of the film lies. The FBI logged a call to a woman at 10.00 pm and all he did was asking her to sing the gospel, giving us an insight in the belief that guided this great man. In regards to his marriage and rumoured infedility “Selma” merely hints at this and it does not tarnished King as its depicted as part of the FBI’s attempts to weaken King.
We have to relate the movie against the background of current events in Ferguson, also mentioned by Common in the theme song “Glory”. So it leaves us pondering on if the dream of Martin Luther King has yet been achieved. Does the election of the first black American President, unthinkable back then, work like a magical spell against all racist tensions, or if we rather have to remind ourselves that the sentiment expressed by one of the young white onlookers, showing his middle finger to the camera in the archive footage from the Selma march, still are very much alive today, and that’s why a film about Martin Luther Kings struggle is still as important today.