Selma—Movie Review

by Peter J. O'Connell

Selma. Opened: Jan. 2, 2015. Running time: 128 mins. Rated: PG-13 for disturbing thematic material, including violence, a suggestive moment, and brief strong language.

Selma is a movie about a march, a man, a movement, and a moment. The march is the epochal one in Alabama in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery. The man is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The movement is, of course, the civil rights movement. The moment is the turning point in history that made the right to vote a reality for millions of black citizens.

For generations Alabama's law and policies, like those of other Southern states, had left virtually its entire black population disenfranchised. In early 1965 grassroots activists in the small city of Selma asked Dr. King and the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which he led, to assist them in their attempt to secure voting rights. The attempt promised to be difficult indeed, for County Sheriff Jim Clark's force of racist deputies was backed up by wily segregationist Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) and his state police. 

                                                                                                                                                                                     Dr. King (David Oyelowo) arrived in Selma and immediately found himself having to make tough choices among various strategies and tactics that contended within the civil rights movement.

Some in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), already on the scene in Selma, resented SCLC's involvement. Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch) put in an appearance, with an approach very different from that of Dr. King's profound commitment to nonviolence. In Washington, President Lyndon Baines Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), who had pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, now wanted emphasis placed on his War on Poverty rather than voting rights legislation. Matters were complicated further for Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo), by an ugly campaign of harassment against the couple, orchestrated by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker) and aimed at exacerbating problems in their marriage.

Eventually, SCLC and SNCC agreed to organize a march from Selma to the state capitol steps in Montgomery to focus national attention on the voting rights issue and put pressure on both Governor Wallace and President Johnson. Two attempts at the march were aborted. The first attempt was halted by the infamous attack by sheriff's deputies and state police, some on horseback, who brutally beat, teargassed and whipped the marchers, shocking the nation, and even the world, and leading President Johnson to give high priority to a voting rights bill. (This attack is stunningly depicted in the film.) The second attempt at a march was halted by Dr. King himself, who decided to wait for a judge (Martin Sheen) to lift his order against the march. The third attempt was successful. National figures joined the march, and tens of thousands entered Montgomery.

Director Ava DuVernay has crafted a moving recreation of the key moment in history that the Selma events represented. However, as the closing credits say, the film “is emphatically not a documentary” and has taken some dramatic license. The license is most evident in the depiction of President Johnson. LBJ was much more collaborative in the voting rights effort than the film has it. We know this from, among other things, Oval Office tapes. (Nixon was not the first to tape there!)

DuVernay, though, is notably successful in her casting. The leads, both Afro-British actors, give impressive portrayals of impressive personages. DuVernay and David Oyelowo understand that it is not enough simply to deliver Dr. King's inherently powerful public rhetoric. The power of his personality has to be projected also in quiet and intimate moments. Oyelowo's facial expressions and “body English” do this very effectively in those moments, particularly those involving the problems in the King marriage—problems that the film neither sensationalizes nor ignores. Carmen Ejogo's performance movingly conveys Coretta King's sense of dignity, inner as well as outer, and the mix of joy and sorrow that she felt in her eventful life. Despite the problems in their marriage, the movie leaves no doubt that the Kings deeply loved each other.

“Footnote” to the film: Oyelowo and Ejogo bear a striking physical resemblance to their historical counterparts, as do many in the cast. Exceptions are Tim Roth, who doesn't look much like George Wallace, and Dylan Baker, who doesn't look anything like J. Edgar Hoover. Also, it's somewhat surprising that DuVernay in her film does not use much of the wonderful music associated with the civil rights movement and the black church, opting instead for a more current sound.