The Academy were wrong to overlook this fine film

Rating: Null/10 (28 February 2015)

As a result of a trip to Africa, it was a few days after the Academy Awards 2015 ceremony before I was able to see "Selma". It was terribly unfair that David Oyelowo's commanding performance as Dr Martin Luther King Jr did not obtain a nomination for Best Actor but at least "Glory" - the moving piece that accompanies the film's credits - won the Best Song award. This is not a bio-pic but instead an examination of a short but seminal time in King's struggle for civil rights and specifically the right of African- Americans to vote, so the three Selma to Montgomery marches of March 1965 come after the "I have a dream" speech in Washington DC in 1963 and before the assassination in Memphis 1968.
"Selma" is no Hollywood blockbuster: the budget was a mere $20M, the director Ava DuVernay is a black woman whose previous work was mostly in television, and there are no big name American actors on show. Three key roles went to fine British actors: Oyelowo himself and Tom Wilkinson as President Johnson and Tim Roth as Governor Wallace, while Oprah Winfrey has a small but pivotal appearance. In all the circumstances, therefore, it is a real achievement that the movie was made at all and that it is so good.
A major problem in representing such an iconic figure as Dr King and such a noble cause as the civil rights movement is how honest to make the narrative. King is revealed as an adulterer and a leader who sometimes made decisions which many followers found hard to comprehend, while the film shows a little of the divisions in the movement, notably between the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Overall, however, this is an inspirational film that uncomfortably holds up a mirror to contemporary America where voting rights are still being circumscribed and blacks are still being beaten and shot by the agents of law enforcement.