Ava DuVernay’s SELMA, a civil-rights drama starring David Oyelowo as Dr King

Johnson is shown first being briefed on King's "degeneracy" by Hoover and having no interest in using it. Then there is tactical friction between MLK and LBJ and a scene ends with a bark of "Get me Hoover."

so Cohen wrote a series of links instead of a column

Every motherfucking docudrama "distorts the truth." The brouhaha here is ludicrous if you compare it to stuff that, say, The Imitation Game makes up outta whole cloth.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/12/03/the_imitation_game_fact_vs_fiction_how_true_the_new_movie_is_to_alan_turing.html

That said, Selma is not a great film. The target audience is people who would not read Parting the Waters, ever. DuVernay said she had a young man come up to her and say "I never knew what 'MLK' meant."

(a young black man, that is, but most of the white audience for this film doesn't know the history in detail either)

Attacking a civil rights film for not being friendly enough towards white people...

precisely.

Slate has one of those "accuracy" columns on this film but I don't see the point of linking until it's been in general release.

if u want a president heavy in a civil rights movie and why wouldn't you, seems a shame to pass up the scene where jfk (bobby having failed) takes mlk out into the rose garden by himself to demand he renounce ties with stanley levinson because j edgar hoover is claiming that way secret evidence proves he is in regular contact w the kremlin, and mlk keeps saying implacably that he'd like to see the evidence. timeframe of this movie does not allow for it tho i get that, plus our dying king iirc. still looking forward to this, vaguely. morbs otm re: the happily swallowed distortions of whiter biopics.

My problem with biopics isn't usually related to historical accuracy at all but rather the fact that it's almost impossible to make a life narratively satisfying, and often results in many skilled actors' worst performances.

figure the best way to get around the first problem is to make a movie about an event rather than a life, which the title suggests this does, but yeah assuming the manner of a real person esp a famous person from the massmedia age does often seem to absorb a huge amount of actor-energy that in a different performance might be spent in a different way.

Well fortunately this film, like Lincoln, only covers a few months. xp

I realize that the bloody desegregation of the American South is a more loaded topic than statistical analysis in sports, but 3/4 of what was shown in Moneyball never happened.

Yes, more and more movies are taking that approach. Which is only moderately encouraging.

well in biopics of the '30s and '40s, they pretty much made it all up.

A voting supression film runs into the same problem as a slavery film or a holocaust film or a gulag film: It's about widespread opresssion, not personal triumph, therefore makes bad films if depicted 'truthfully'. Slavery wasn't one guy for 12 years. Holocaust wasn't one white guy saving jews. AIDS epidemic wasn't a straight guy heroically procuring drugs. And voting opression definitely wasn't a white texas democrat carreer politician heroically doing something to stop political discrimination.

This is essentially a historical pageant in mostly good ways. ... Oyelowo is the heart of it by mastering the cadences and carriage, conveying the guilt and mission.
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 2, 2015 10:24 PM (4 days ago)

That said, Selma is not a great film. The target audience is people who would not read Parting the Waters, ever. DuVernay said she had a young man come up to her and say "I never knew what 'MLK' meant."
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, January 6, 2015 12:21 PM (9 hours ago)

Yeah, I'm basically between these two positions too, admitting I too didn't know or didn't remember every detail of the event. Accuracy claims probably neither unfounded nor totally relevant, since this is as much a movie that takes it to church as it is a historical pageant. There's a delicious dramatic (if not accurate) irony that, after hearing the perfect, impassioned words of countless noble black Americans and doing nothing, LBJ's dial is finally turned by the firm words of a ferociously disgusting white man.

That's literally how it plays out. Tim Roth's Gov. Wallace says, "Next they'll actually want to get paid." Cut to LBJ telling Congress, "We shall overcome."

It's true that as LBJ briefly mentions in that scene, Wallace made his rep in Alabama with anti-poverty politics. And then after he got shot, he courted black votes and got himself elected governor again in 1982.

Johnson is shown first being briefed on King's "degeneracy" by Hoover and having no interest in using it. Then there is tactical friction between MLK and LBJ and a scene ends with a bark of "Get me Hoover."
― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, January 6, 2015 12:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

interesting… this reminds me a bit of the way that "zero dark thirty" implied a causal link between torture and finding bin laden simply by having two important scenes follow one another. in a sense it allowed the filmmakers to have it both ways (in the usual hollywood fashion); a kind of plausible deniability in which causality is implied but not overtly stated. (this is what glenn greenwald, a smart guy who is not so smart about movies, missed—he assumed that a causal connection was being asserted when in fact it was just an implication that the audience could take or leave.)

not sure if "selma" functions exactly this way… just some thoughts…

still waiting for a really smart close analysis of ZDT, btw. can anyone recommend one?

well, you can try this one and the link at the top it responds to.

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/can-monitors-monitor-the-monitors-or-reality-as-an-extension-of-fiction-by-other-means

greenwald's piece was especially annoying because he'd already criticized the film a few times before actually seeing it.

yeah. once he saw it, confirmation bias pretty much guaranteed his response. the film has plenty to criticize, for sure, but greenwald seemed pretty steadfast in his inability to (or disinterest in) seeing any nuance.

http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/oscar-films-the-prison-of-historical-accuracy.html

i think he implies a kind of false dilemma (even though he walks it back a few times). sure, docudramas don't have to be--and frankly, can't be--completely historically accurate, but i think if the filmmakers want us to take them seriously they have to show a sincere and intelligent grappling with issues of historical representation.

and i get the sense that the question about "Selma" is not only whether it "downplays" LBJ's contributions (that is a legitimate debate that isn't likely to ever be fully settled) but whether it actually suggests that he was party to the FBI's surveillance and harrassment of King--a serious allegation that, if indeed the film makes or implies it, deserves to be reckoned with the historical record.

NB i haven't seen the movie :)

So, let’s also take a moment to soak in the irony of the fact that DuVernay specifically could not use any of King’s actual speeches in her film; those rights apparently have been licensed to DreamWorks and Steven Spielberg

does Godard know about this? (not that he's shown much interest in african-americans...)

well we know he helped set in motion the CIA assassinating JFK, i wouldn't put it past him

fuck yeah! he has no reason to lie

I enjoyed this until the ending, all that thickly laid corniness and shite music at the end really detracted from some good film-making and acting performances. Well apart from Tim Roth, who sneaked onto the set somehow.

yes i kinda cringed when we ended w/ a montage, doctored newsreels and John Legend

another good ref point: Judgment Days, which I'm reading now. Just when you think the FBI could not have behaved worse.

Hey, on YouTube, you can watch a Wallace made-for-tv movie (YouTube is a terrific archive of made-for-tv fare) with Gary Sinise as Wallace, and after watching it, it is hard to imagine anyone else in the role. I recommend it. Although it cuts out all of the Klan supporters I read about in a bio of Wallace. Seriously, Sinise looks like he was born with a cigar & drink in hand.

Can't wait to see Selma anyway.

Good to excellent except for Wilkinson's cartoon LBJ (might as well not include him at all).

I didn't think much to Tim Roth's cartoon Gov Wallace either, how does he still get the work after 20 odd years of shiteness? Not put in a proper acting shift since Vincent and Theo, last job was playing a young Sepp Blatter in a FIFA vanity project! It is a shame there were some dodgy casting decisions and that horrible montage at the end, this could have been so much better.

a better acted cartoon than LBJ.

i din't find him a persuasive LBJ at all, no. Coulda been the writing.

Roth was good enough.

Any movie with a performance as good as Oyelowo's doesn't deserve Roth stinking it up imo. His American accent is a complete fail for starters. Even newbies like Matthew Rhys have mastered the accent, Roth has been at it for decades and still sounds like a posh schoolboy wonder prick auditioning for Bugsy Malone.

Brits are usually better with Southern accents. Geez, even Michael Gambon played a persuasive LBJ in Path to War.

Oyelowo is much subtler than the awards bait suggests.

I benefitted from not being American and thus intimately familiar w/ the real Wallace+LBJ

i saw a clip of oyelowo, goddamn. just his performance alone is enough to make me want to see this

I thought this was great, really powerful. Minor quibbles: Wilkinson is a great actor, how could he not land LBJ's accent? Second, I'm not a fan of name actors showing up in barely-there supporting roles (Sheen, Dylan Baker, Cuba, Oprah). Malcolm X was so dead-on in his cameo I was worried it would be revealed he was actually Brad Pitt.

Seriously, though, great stuff. The acting across the board is amazing, and it looked great, not at all like an overlit TV movie.

Agreed.

That is a fair review and I am glad you noted this "although the John Legend song blasting over the final footage is a menace".

it was like something from a shit tv movie, which this clearly wasn't.

cringed at Martin Sheen

Oprah was the producer, so she was gonna be in it

Dylan Baker is at best That Guy to Joe & Jane Moviegoer

I didn't mind Oprah; she's got presence.

My only prob with Oprah was that she was little more than just that: present. It's like, hey, there's Oprah, looking upset. I'm not sure she even had any lines beyond her (strong) registering to vote scene. Just another face in the crowd the rest of the film. As for Dylan baker, yeah, he's barely in it, too, but it's this relatively long psycho scene that's tonally inconsistent with the film. Probably could have been chopped, or reduced to a phone call with the pres about digging up dirt.

Reminds me, I also found the random time stamps a little distracting and unnecessary, too. But all minor quibbles. How much if any of this film was shot on location in Alabama? I've been to most of those sites, but there's no way to tell just by looking.

Oh, another surprise for me was that I had no idea what MLK's four kids ever amounted to, and I was saddened to learn that all sort of followed the cliche path of children of famous people, replete with "acting" careers and lawsuits and whatnot. Also just saw this:

Those revisions included rewriting King's speeches, because, in 2009, King's estate licensed them to DreamWorks Pictures and Warner Bros. for an untitled project to be produced by Steven Spielberg. Subsequent negotiations between those companies and Selma's producers did not lead to an agreement. DuVurnay is credited with writing alternative speeches that evoke the historic ones without violating the copyright.

Also, wow, did not consider that pretty much all the leads (MLK, his wife, Johnson) were Brits.

Thank goodness that John Legend/Common song won the Golden Globe, ensuring that we will be hearing it for years to come. Years, I tell you. However it goes.

I had the same reaction in the same sense that "nothing was delivered" and it's not a great movie.

docudramas are tough, i sympathize with any filmmaker who takes one on. on the other hand, it's often an easy way to get plaudits for what in other contexts would be apparent as merely average filmmaking (see e.g. "fruitvale station").

it ain't large-scale fraud like the Turing movie, and i have a pessimistic notion which one will win more Oscars. (if any)

yeah it's helpful to keep in mind how bad it could have been. that doesn't necessarily mean i'm feeling particularly grateful, though.

i assume we've done a "best biopics" thread. the one that comes to my mind as particularly outstanding is "an angel at my table," but there are plenty of classic hollywood biopics that are pretty damn good, even if they aren't much closer to reality than your average genre film.

am, how did you rate Lincoln among Hollywood biopics?

I wish I didn't hate Angel at My Table.

i wish you didn't, either

Well moreso I wish it had never been made.

sigh

yeah, sigh.

i guess i had mixed feelings about lincoln. i liked the details of political horse-trading, but the final reel was a mess.

still mad kushner fucked around with the votes there

if it weren't for his meddling we would've had President McClellan.

Charles Pierce on this "war movie":

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Seeing_Selma

Mark Harris closely examines the "liberties"

as the progressive media-watchdog group FAIR has noted, the White House tapes from 1965 demonstrate Johnson’s growing impatience with and mistrust of King and the protesters in the days and weeks before Selma; that is not a figment of DuVernay’s imagination.“He better get to behaving himself or all of them are going to be put in jail,” Johnson warned. “I think that we really ought to be firm on it myself. I’ve been watching it here, and looks like that man’s in charge of the country and taking it over.”

http://grantland.com/features/selma-oscars-academy-awards-historical-accuracy-controversy/

after the Watts riots (days after signing the Voting Rights Act, recall) and Vietnam started getting serious LBJ turned to more than usual self-pity.

that piece just made me think of Kushner saying of Lincoln "yes, i made up dialogue, i'm not psychic."

that mark harris piece was good.

this paragraph gets at an aspect of "selma" that's quite admirable in theory, but doesn't play very well on screen as drama:

“Your husband and I, we do not see exactly eye to eye on how to achieve progress for the black man,” he tells her (a line that positions him at exactly the same distance from King as LBJ). “But because we don’t agree … does not mean that I am the enemy.” In fact, he says, his image in white America as a dangerous menace could be of help: “Allow me to be the alternative to your husband — the alternative that scares them so much they turn to Dr. King in refuge.”

i mean, it's really hard to make lines that /talk/, and du vernay didn't really figure out a way. too much of her film feels like a waxworks, even (especially) in moments that are meant--all too pointedly, perhaps--to seem off-the-cuff.

yes, that one is expositiony ... except Malcolm is v much the lecturer in all the recordings i've heard, who knows how much of that is plausible in pvt too.

That's one of the best essays I've read this new year, even though, like am, I'm more persuaded by Harris' rhetoric than by the force of his argument.

it's true that malcolm x was one of those people who seemed to speak in impossibly well-turned sentences even when speaking off the cuff. so there's some warrant for those lines. but still, in general i think the film's staging/visualization was pretty conventional.

but he smiled! That's gotta count!

ive seen this LBJ

https://twitter.com/NickPinkerton/status/575759085850750977

How's the animatronic?

Best one I've seen, not in terms of the animation, but in terms of posing, is the Huey Long one in Louisiana's old state capitol. It delivers recorded speeches, from his desk, right next to the spot where he was murdered. The bullet hole is still in the wall!

dummy is a little stiff

Thought this was good not quite great. Pro: Oyelowo nailed it, the arguments about tactics were juicy and engaging, and the centrepiece bridge attack was phenomenal. Con: the dialogue was shaky in places, Roth and Wilkinson had distractingly bad accents and what the hell was happening with that Fink song in the final montage, just before Glory? No political movement in history had a better soundtrack and they plumped for that?

http://blackagendareport.libsyn.com/selma-black-history-according-to-opra

Read this roughly when the film came out, it stuck in my head. Got no interest in seeing the film, just curious what you guys think of the piece. It's short.

But Oprah loves the Kennedys, and so the movie leads the audience to believe that J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson set out to surveil and destroy King because of his push for voting rights. But Attorney General Robert Kennedy signed the order, while his brother, who was then president, was still alive.

tbf this was when hoover was blackmailing the first bros over judith exner, but i stand by my post upthread that's waiting for the mlk movie that includes

the scene where jfk (bobby having failed) takes mlk out into the rose garden by himself to demand he renounce ties with stanley levinson because j edgar hoover is claiming that way-secret evidence proves he is in regular contact w the kremlin, and mlk keeps saying implacably that he'd like to see the evidence

because it is as good as great-man history (not the best lens for civil rights history) gets: mlk is nudged up the chain link-by-link, from aide to aide to rfk to jfk, and each successively more powerful person makes the same demand of him and is rebuffed, until finally mlk is alone with the most powerful person there is, who makes the same demand, and is rebuffed--and it's not just a scene about "personal integrity" but a scene about who actually has power and where they are getting it from.

Having taken the kids to Black Panther on Friday, I proposed that we all watch Selma last night -- kind of a Black History Month double-feature. I hadn't seen it, but I thought it might resonate with them and I was right. Some of the talky parts and references were over the heads of yr average 9- and 13-year-old, but I filled in gaps where I could. And in the moments that mattered obviously I didn't have to explain anything. The beatings and murders are vicious and disturbing (in a way that the beatings and murders in, say, Black Panther are not). My younger son several times said, "That should be illegal!," with genuine outrage.

It's not a great movie, but it's pretty good and its conventionality and narrative reductions make it a good civil rights movie for kids. It's one thing to learn about segregation, as they both have. It's another thing to watch people being bludgeoned by the state.

too bad she's going on to make a terrible looking Wrinkle in Time adaptation, I think she's a more talented director than that lets on (maybe I'll be surprised but the trailers are painful)

Yeah I'm not optimistic about Wrinkle.