Review of Selma (2014) by Darvis S — 12 Mar 2015

It's unfortunate what happened to Selma this year. And no, I'm not talking about the nominations issue, though I'll lay it out there right now, Ava Duvarney, David Oyelowo and the screenplay all deserved nominations.

No, I mean the fact that hundreds of people who didn't even see the film launched their "Who was this not nominated?" outrage, causing the typically defensive talking heads to launch back about how "Lyndon Johnson isn't portrayed right", leading to a lot of inflammatory shouting and damaging overexagerations (hint, don't use the word "only" unless you mean "only", because the very existence of Training Day's Oscar proves the Academy doesn't "only" award subservient black roles, just almost exclusively, and if you're gonna go up against actual racists in the media, you gotta be armed with irrefutable facts, not generalizations).

All of this, all of the political grandstanding and stunts on both sides detracted from what could have been a very poignant film that could have made a difference. The "Oscars so white" movement thrust Selma as a pawn in the ongoing racial tension in America, rather than it being a bridge across a gap.

After all, this raw, human portrait of MLK, rightly called an "anti-biopic" for deftly avoiding the deification of its subject or the Hollywood-ization of its story, has a lot to offer today's America, if the people who needed to hear it actually saw it.

So soon after a series of murders rocked New York City, to see a scene where an angry young man wants to find a gun to "fight back" against the police, he's advised that "you kill two of them, they kill ten of us".

The film is an example of many things, from the power of non-violent protests to the cruelty of a world before the (now repealed) voting rights act, all the while at its core being the portrait of one incredible man.

It's my hope that in years down the line, people untainted by the politicizing of this marvelous film might get to appreciate it for what it is.