Best Biopic Since Malcom X

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2015)

This is my first IMDb review. I was so moved by this movie that I felt it was necessary to write one. I am a black male. My mom dragged me to this movie. I did not like the Butler -which she loved- and did not see 12 years a slave. Honestly, I am tired of these types of movies. But boy was I wrong about Selma.
*Spoiler Alert The movies starts with a dramatic scene. You hear young girls in a church talking about Coretta Scott King's hair. I thought this was a very powerful scene. You could imagine that girls of a similar age might talk about our First Lady -Michelle Obama- and how and she wears her hair. They were talking about how much they admired her. Then boom you see the church blow up in the famous bombing. I wasn't expecting that. I knew about the incident, but it was enough of a surprise that it grabbed my attention.
*End of Spoilers-- From there you see the main actor absolutely BECOME Martin Luther King. David's performance was nothing short of spectacular. He really embodied MLK. He sounded like him. He talked like him. He was him. Even though he does not really look just like him at times you close your eyes and feel as if you are hearing MLK speak. He was very strong with his sermons and speeches throughout the movie. I was also impressed that the director wrote the speeches because of copywrite reasons.
Where I thought the movie truly shined was that it gave you a behind the scenes look at the politics behind the march at Selma. *Spoiler - A lot has been made about supposed historical inaccuracies between MLK and Lyndon Johnson (LBJ). I couldn't disagree more. From what we know about LBJ he was a very complex man. The movie does not paint him as necessarily racist. It shows him as a POLITICIAN. It shows him as a man concerned with his legacy. I thought this was very believable. History has told us that yes Johnson did care about civil rights. And I thought the movie showed that he did with his conversation with George Wallace. But it is not inaccurate to say that he cared about playing politics. He wanted to create a legacy. He wanted to stand on the right side of history. To me it kind of seemed like how Abraham Lincoln receives praise for freeing the slaves, when really all he cared about was preserving the union. Does that make Abraham Lincoln a bad person or what he did any less commendable? I think not.
This quote from LBJ really sums up how the movie dealt with the LBJ/MLK relationship. "These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference... I'll have them n***** voting Democratic for the next two hundred years".
To me the movie painted LBJ not as a saint as some would like it, but as a complex man who did have some progessive views on race for a Southern Democrat, played politics, did not seem to be terribly racist, but wasn't the white saint/savior some people hope for. I digress sorry for this rant.
As far as Tom Wilkinson's portrayal seemed fair and he did an adequate job playing the character.
As for MLK he was not painted as a saint either. We see a man who has some demons. We get a very dramatic scene between him and Coretta where she asks him about his extra-marital affairs. It was very well done and the director was not afraid to go there and present a balanced view of who MLK was.
This movie really did keep me on the edge of my seat. What I think worked the best was the fact that it followed a short period of time. This allowed for more detail. We got to see those meetings between MLK and his inner circle. We got to see disagreement in strategy among the leaders. We got to see that MLK was tired and beat down from leading the movement. We saw MLK as a human being rather than the deity or legend that he has become.
Overall 10/10. Unbelievable movie. I will be going to see it again MLK weekend.