Butler's Cinema Scene

“SELMA”  My rating: B+ 

127 minutes  | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Like writing history with lightning.”

That was President Woodrow Wilson’s reaction to a 1915 White House screening of the Civil War epic “Birth of a Nation,” a film whose artistic ambitions were matched only by its racism.

A century later, director Ava DuVernay has given us “Selma,” a docudrama about a pivotal campaign in the fight for civil rights for black Americans. You could say this film writes history not so much with lightning as with compassion.

“Selma” often gets the details wrong (shuffling chronologies and geography, for instance), but its emotional heft is undeniable. In re-creating the 1965 protest marches from Selma, Ala., led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the movie captures the epic sweep of social upheaval, but also the way it played out for the individuals — famous and anonymous — who made it happen.

David Oweyolo as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s as close to being there as most of us will ever get.

The screenplay by Paul Webb (his first) cannily begins with three scenes that establish the film’s breadth of focus and what is at stake.

In Oslo, Norway, the Reverend King (David Oyelowo, who like most of the lead players is British) accepts the Nobel Peace Prize.

In Selma, black housewife Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey, one of the movie’s producers) attempts to register to vote. A sneering clerk orders her to recite from memory the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. When she does so flawlessly, he tells her to come back when she has memorized the names of all the county judges in Alabama.

And in Montgomery, Ala., four black girls are killed when a bomb planted by racists goes off in their church during Sunday services.

King and other civil rights leaders focus their efforts to register black voters in Selma, a burg so racially backward and with such thuggish law enforcement that it perfectly meets their needs.  With the media focused on the situation — dignified protestors being abused by white cops and racist mobs — the federal government will be forced to get involved.

Tom Wilkinson as LBJ, David Oyelowo as MLK

In Washington, President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson, offering a borderline caricature of Texas movin’ and shakin’) wants to put voting rights on the back burner while emphasizing his planned war on poverty: “This votin’ thing’s just gonna have to wait.”

When it becomes clear the protestors won’t back down, a frustrated Johnson — “You tryin’ to (expletive) over your president?” — entertains a suggestion by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker) that audio tapes of King in compromising sexual situations be anonymously mailed to the Reverend’s wife, Coretta (Carmen Ejogo).

(LBJ experts already are complaining that the film makes the Prez look like King’s adversary rather than one of civil rights’ strongest supporters.)

And in Montgomery, Gov. George Wallace (Tim Roth, villainous but lacking the real Wallace’s bigger-than-life bluster) does a slow burn as he realizes he’s about to be squeezed between the overreactions of his racist electorate and a federal government that will be forced to step in.

“Selma” crams an awful lot of history, intrigue and familiar faces (Cuba Gooding Jr., Wendell Pierce, Giovanni Ribisi, Alessandro Nivola, Martin Sheen, Lorraine Toussaint) into two hours.

Central to all this is Oyelowo’s portrayal of King. He gives us not a saint (although with his spectacular grasp of language he could be considered a prophet) but a pragmatist who works like a master politician in smoke-filled rooms to reconcile black leaders vying for control.

We’re all familiar with the public King (at times Oyelowo uncannily channels the great man’s physicality and vocal cadences), but the actor also digs deeepr to show his subject’s moments of conflict, fear and doubt.  And though King’s well-documented (thanks to the FBI) sexual peccadillos are referred to only tangentially, it’s hard not to see them quietly boiling beneath the seemingly genteel veneer of his marriage.

It’s a very strong performance and a likely Oscar contender.  But do not think that “Selma” is simply the Martin Luther King Story. This movie is about the movement and the moment, with King just one of many important players.

Duvernay and Webb create an atmosphere of hope and dread that not only engenders deep respect for the men and women who risked life and limb to march, but leaves us wishing that we could have been part of it.

And lest you think that “Selma” is a complacent depiction of a long-ago battle fought and won, the movie ends with fresh news footage of protesters in Ferguson, Mo.

The message is inescapable: This war isn’t over yet.