Selma ****½ (2014, David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tim Roth, Tom Wilkinson) – Movie Review

David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo do a thoroughly excellent job of portraying Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King in this sterling re-creation of the civil rights marches of Selma, Alabama. There’s not been a major movie made with King at the centre in 50 years and here, at last, it is.

Tom Wilkinson and Tim Roth are hardly the most obvious choices as the dithering and semi-reactionary US President Lyndon B. Johnson and the prejudiced and wholly reactionary state governor George Wallace, but they both triumph through their veteran acting skills.

Director Ava DuVernay (inheriting the project from Lee Daniels and Spike Lee) makes a grand piece of work out of re-creating the unforgettable true story of the tumultuous three months in 1965 when King found he had no honourable choice but to lead a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. DuVernay’s mini-epic film is tense, gripping, complex and true throughout, never faltering, and pulling it all in together at a compact 127 minutes.

Even though King’s estate would not grant the film permission to use his iconic speeches, original writer Paul Webb and an uncredited DuVernay come up with a marvellously clear, intelligent and informative screenplay that cuts to the chase.

DuVernay says: ‘I just untethered myself from King’s words and anchored myself in the intention of those words and rewrote the speeches as closely to his cadence and his intention as I could.’ She isn’t credited because Paul Webb had a contract so his credit is completely contractual. It was up to him whether or not he wanted to share credit and he chose not to.

Oprah Winfrey plays Annie Lee Cooper. DuVernay says: ‘Oprah didn’t want to do it. I asked her several times. She was the only one I had to really pitch.’ Others in the cast include Dylan Baker as J. Edgar Hoover, Alessandro Nivola as John Doar, Martin Sheen as Frank Minis Johnson, Cuba Gooding Jr as Fred Gray, Tessa Thompson, Lorraine Toussaint, Common and Wendell Pierce.

I hope it’s not a spoiler to say that the story has a happy ending and that the epic march from Selma to Montgomery shown in the film culminated in Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. This is exactly the right film that this all-important story needs and deserves.

Selma earned Best Picture and Best Original Song (‘Glory’) Oscar nominations, but director DuVernay and star Oyelowo were controversially overlooked for nominations.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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