I Loved Almost Every Minute of SELMA, But . . .

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2015)

I loved so many things about SELMA. I loved the gentleness and patience of Martin Luther King Jr. I loved the youthful energy and optimism of the amazing volunteers such as John Lewis. I loved the glamorous tributes to real life heroes from the entertainment world who made a difference, such a Harry Belafonte. (Best musical moment: The whole cast singing "Daylight come and we want to go home.") I loved the inspiring images of Americans both black and white gathering together at the bridge in the name of freedom. I even loved the way English actor Tim Roth (a hero of mine since RESERVOIR DOGS) played racist Alabama governor George Wallace as the ultimate Snidely Whiplash villain, relishing his extravagantly exaggerated Southern accent and his genuinely chilling lack of human feeling in every scene.
I loved all of it, but . . .
I wish that someday we could have a movie that goes beyond the early, innocent days of the Civil Rights movement. Dr. King to the end of his life was haunted by the way non-violence failed as a strategy in big northern cities like Chicago and Boston. Why did the movement fall apart? What went wrong in the cities? Why did white immigrants in the north (Poles, Italians, the Irish) resist integration with even more savage fury than poor whites in the south? Why did young blacks turn to violence instead of peaceful protest? Oh, let's not think about that . . . let's make another movie about Birmingham and Selma! I understand that Dr. King's adultery was shameful and inexcusable, but I wish that the outraged-wife scene (complete with Coretta's stony silence and lavishly recorded male moans) could have been less prim and judgmental. The movie gives too much weight to King's extra-marital affairs, in a way calculated to gratify the female audience. When a protester being beaten to death gets six seconds of screen time, while the wronged wife gets ten minutes to sulk and pout, it's hard not to feel that someone's been watching to much OPRAH.
Who produced this movie, anyway? Oh, wait. Oprah!