Review: Selma

A biopic but not so much the life story of Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo), so much as an important chapter in his life and the civil rights struggle in America. It is mostly concerned with King’s attempts to convince President Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson, with a decent American accent) to pass legislation giving African-Americans the same legal voting rights as whites. The situation is already complicated, but Johnson’s reticence to act swiftly and the opposition from blatantly racist Gov. Wallace (Tim Roth) make King’s struggle even harder. Meanwhile, there are strains on the home front to contend with too, in his marriage to Coretta (Carmen Ejogo). The title, by the way, refers to the town from which King wants to organise several marches to Montgomery in non-violent protest. Dylan Baker turns up as J. Edgar Hoover, Stephen Root is an advisor to Gov. Wallace, Nigel Thatch plays Malcolm X, Martin Sheen is a judge, whilst Oprah Winfrey is a woman championing equal voting rights, and Lorraine Toussaint and Common play supporters of Dr. King.

 

I’m sure I’ll get pillocked by some of the same people who are behind the recent Oscars diversity hype, but this 2014 biopic from director Ava DuVernay (“Middle of Nowhere”) and screenwriter Paul Webb (with his debut screenplay) is decidedly average, and that is likely why it didn’t score big at the Oscars. The reason why David Oyelowo wasn’t nominated for an Oscar wasn’t because he is black. It’s because he doesn’t look much like Martin Luther King Jr., sounds even less like him, and above all else, gives a muted, pensive and fairly dull performance lacking in any charisma or screen presence whatsoever. He makes a fascinating man seem incredibly boring and never once drew me in. That voice, by the way is a big issue. Those of us outside of the US mostly know of MLK through his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech, that is, through his voice. So if you don’t get that right, you’re already drowning. Oyelowo is just OK at the end of the day, and severely hampered by his failure at capturing the iconic voice. BTW, I won’t make this entire review a rant against the 2016 discussion on race and the Oscars (a discussion born out of good intentions, but poor thought. Two years of non-representation do not make a race scandal!), but I’d feel like I was doing a disservice to not at least get my thoughts out there. Hope y’all like quotas and not knowing if someone won on talent or not, because that’s the situation as it is now. Anyway, on to the meat of the review.

 

This movie could’ve (and really should’ve) been great, there’s certainly a compelling motion picture to be told in the subject at hand. Unfortunately, no one here has found an interesting way of telling the story. Perhaps a more assured/experienced director/screenwriter team should’ve made it, I don’t know. It’s not a bad film (despite having one of the most poorly-chosen titles of all-time from a marketing POV), in fact it’s sort of watchable, but it’s horribly uneven and ultimately very choppy and episodic. I think a documentary on the same subject would be vastly superior.

 

There’s some stuff here that I just didn’t buy. Dylan Baker is suitably creepy but otherwise completely wrong for J. Edgar Hoover, neither looking nor sounding any more like the man than the miscast Leonardo DiCaprio did in Clint Eastwood’s disappointing “J. Edgar”. Hell, for some reason Baker makes Hoover (who grew up in Washington) sound vaguely Southern! Am I the only one who was hearing that? Even worse is Tim Roth as George Wallace, the actor just doesn’t convince playing a Southern cracker, let alone look anything like the guy (Wallace looked more like director Oliver Stone, if anything. Google him and you’ll see). Having said that, the character itself is pretty much one-dimensional and uninteresting anyway. I also found some of the cameo-spotting roles for the likes of Martin Sheen, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Giovanni Ribisi to be distracting and unnecessary. They’re all good actors but not given enough screen time to matter and just not necessary (I can’t even remember who Gooding and Ribisi played to be honest). Meanwhile, the film tells me that MLK called Mahalia Jackson in the middle of the night to hear her sing. The film does not, however convince me that it happened. True or not, it feels corny as shown here. You also likely won’t learn anything about MLK that you didn’t already know or can’t already find out elsewhere. Possibly even less, actually. In fact, the most fascinating stuff is the information text at the end of the film charting what happened to several of the characters after the events depicted in the film. I actually found reading this information to be far more moving than anything in the film that preceded it! Also, as much as many of you will agree with me, I feel the decision to play a hippity hop song over the end credits is slightly insulting and certainly crude. Hippity hop fans will probably disagree (as did Academy voters who nominated the damn thing for Best Song), but I just winced at it as much as you’re wincing at my insistence on using the term ‘hippity hop’. You thought I didn’t know it’s actually hip-hop, didn’t you?

 

Having said all of this, the film is still sort of watchable, and I did find some positive attributes in it. The performances of Carmen Ejogo (very solid as Mrs. King), Tom Wilkinson, and in smaller roles Oprah Winfrey, Nigel Thatch, and Lorraine Toussaint are all fine. Ejogo and Wilkinson, however, are the only one with substantial roles here. Winfrey’s character is set up to be someone important in the opening scene, but quickly becomes quite literally a background player for the rest of the film (marquee value, perhaps?), and Toussaint’s scene-stealing work on “Orange is the New Black” probably should’ve afforded her more substantial work here, I think. Thatch (in a good, but brief turn) deserves credit for not only looking more like his real-life counterpart than Oyelowo, but he’s probably a better likeness for Malcolm X than even Denzel, who nonetheless gave a brilliant performance in Spike Lee’s (best film to date) “Malcolm X”. Wilkinson is slightly better than OK as LBJ, but earns points from me for not hamming it up too much, which would’ve been an easy thing to do. He doesn’t look or sound that much like the real guy, but enough to get the job done. Even more so than “The Butler”, this film shows LBJ as quite a complex but important figure in all of this. Yes, he uses racial epithets throughout, yes he has opportunistic motives and is slow to act, but ultimately does something about what is going on and is clearly appalled by the far more overtly racist Wallace. I wouldn’t quite call him the ‘white saviour’ cliché (nor does the film attempt to turn him into one), but he’s probably the one white guy in the film who comes out looking relatively sane. Some historians have actually disputed the accuracy of this portrayal, I’m not educated enough on the subject to really pass comment on that.

 

The film does a good job in showing us how much of a struggle this all was for Dr. King and like-minded folks in terms of trying to get shit done. It also shows up the ugliness, stupidity, and senselessness of racism. I wish the film were more enlightening or interesting in regards to its main character, but there’s definitely interesting things to ponder elsewhere in the film.

 

Proof that an important real-life story doesn’t automatically make for a compelling motion picture. When you add miscast actors from top to bottom and episodic storytelling, you’ve got a film that isn’t anywhere near as good as it should’ve been. MLK and Malcolm X may have been similarly important figures in American (and particularly African-American) history, but so far as cinematic biopics go, “Malcolm X” will be remembered long after this film has been forgotten. The real story is powerful, shocking, and absolutely necessary to be told, but you’re better off watching a documentary for that. This is watchable, but not remotely necessary, and David Oyelowo’s lead performance is frustratingly passive. And to think “Gone Girl” (my vote for best film of the year) was likely passed over for a Best Picture nomination for this?

 

Rating: C+