Review of Selma (2014) by Andrea M — 24 Mar 2015

After the criticism the film received for perceived complaining about Oscar snubs, I went in with an expectation - "Oh, this will be a typical Oscar-bait historical drama and nothing more. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been such criticism.

" But the film exceeded my expectations a bit. It is slightly better than most Oscar-bait historical dramas, and oddly, I found its central strength to be what many of the awards pundits considered mediocre - the direction.

Now I feel it did get a bit of a bad rap. The Oscar campaign may have been preachy, but the film was not - white supporters of King have linchpin roles in the story. As a screenwriter, I can say the script is not anything special.

It leans on the content of Dr. King's amazing speeches. It doesn't do a great job of forming the events into a narrative structure. The supers that some may not like because they do not resolve are script things, not director things as many might assume.

Also, there are a whole bunch of characters that are glorified cameos. It's kind of King and everyone else. But the lead's performance, in terms of emotion if not totally in terms of accuracy, really elevates the material, and I would say, so does the direction.

The ending of this film, after it returns from news footage of the famed march to a cinematic version of the speech at the capitol, is incredibly stirring and it is that way purely by the hand of the director and the lead.