Review of Selma (2014) by Ben L — 18 Feb 2015

It's always a difficult thing when you want to criticize a movie that is taking on an issue, because some people might misconstrue your critique as a stance on the issue itself. Hopefully everyone reading this will know that I fully support everything that Dr. King stood for, and I'm delighted with the progress our nation has made and hope that we will continue to improve. Selma did a decent job of at least reminding the audience where we came from. Where I found it lacking, however, was in the story-telling aspect. I did not feel that the story had a natural flow to it, instead it moved along in fits and starts. At times it was almost like a string of vignettes that were cobbled together into a loose whole that didn't gel. They presented events in a relatively chronological order, but there didn't seem to be a natural growth to the story. Even Lyndon B. Johnson, who appeared to be the character who needed to experience an emotional/political change didn't have any logical progression, it was just a dramatic turn on a dime. That can work too, in a better film, but I didn't feel there was one defining moment that caused that character reversal.

David Oyelowo did a masterful job of matching the speaking style and cadence of Martin Luther King Jr. which is not an easy feat to accomplish. However, I felt like he was using the same pacing to his speech in many of the private moments. It just seems illogical that every word this man said would be in the same metered pace that he used when addressing a crowd or congregation. Most of the other actors were solid, although there are a few faces that tend to take me out of the movie a bit (like Cuba Gooding Jr. and Giovanni Ribisi) because they don't sink into the role so all I see is a modern day actor popping into this period piece. But the biggest problem I had with Selma was simply that the plot moved so slowly. I always hate to use the b-word when I'm watching a movie in a theater, but I have to admit I was bored through large sections of this film. It had moments that worked remarkably well, that carried some heightened drama and felt raw and real. However those moments were spaced apart by long sections of people just talking about strategies and policies in flat head-to-head conversations. By the end I didn't feel that Selma accomplished either task it might have been focused on achieving. It did not offer much insight into who Martin Luther King Jr. was as a man, it only presented his method of action. And it did not make a big statement aside from just being an in-depth history lesson. I can't criticize the look of the movie, or the intent behind it, but the execution left me wanting a lot more.