Review of Selma (2014) by Therocksbarney — 07 Feb 2015

There are moments in “Selma” when I felt like I was watching Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (played brilliantly by David Oyelowo) himself speaking on screen. Moments that made me want to clap my hands and stand up and cheer in approval of what he was saying. Moments when I was having to hold tears back. And these moments have stayed with me a couple of days after watching the film. These moments prove how timeless the story and issues are that “Selma” presents to us and although it would be difficult not to get these across, “Selma” does so in a way unlike any other biopic.

David Oyelowo, a British actor, is fantastic and it is an absolute scandal that he has not been nominated for the Best Actor Oscar this year. Perhaps the Academy is still tapping themselves on the back for giving “12 Years a Slave” the Best Picture Oscar last year. When Oyelowo is making those speeches that King made to the Selma black clergy it was like I was watching King in the flesh. Oyelowo looks and sounds like King, effortlessly capturing his manner, grace and style and arguably most importantly his faith. Oyelowo simply pioneers the film in regards to performances, obviously helped along by the fame of his real-life counterpart, the other actors and actresses in the film simply revolve around him. This is especially obvious in the scenes where we get to see King and his colleagues deciding how to proceed in Selma. These backstage scenes seem just like how they would have been, providing an interesting viewpoint considering there isn’t a lot of material detailing what happened. In these scenes King’s colleagues also shine through, Colman Domingo (playing Ralph Abernathy) and Wendell Pierce (playing the Rev. Hosea Williams) are both worth mentioning for their performances. These scenes though do not focus on King and thus do well to emphasise that he was both not alone nor was a God of sorts, but just simply a great man, making him even more relatable and deserved of my sympathy.

Of course “Selma” is a true story and the film sticks to it throughout ultimately doing it a perfect kind of justice. The fact that the film chose Selma as what it was going to cover was a good choice. There was the “battleground” that King decided to use as a means by which to end the struggle blacks had experienced in regards to registering to vote. It’s ultimately the moments which have been well documented that are where the film thrives, “Bloody Sunday” for example. But where the film begins to waver is in its half-hearted commitment towards King’s personal life and I believe this comes from how we obviously know less about King’s personal life then what we know about him as leader of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s those scenes where we see King giving speeches or leading the marches through Selma which are the film’s best, whereas the hypothesised conversations between King and his wife, and meetings between the C.I.A. director J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon B. Johnson really bring the film out of focus.

“Selma” though is ultimately the best biopic I have ever seen. Although I’ve mentioned that King’s personal life for me got in the way of the film, you have to see “Selma”, not only because of how, as critic Richard Roeper put it, it’s a film that provides a history lesson but certainly doesn’t feel like a history lecture, but also because of how the film finally grants King the cinematic justice he deserves with a brilliant performance by Oyelowo.