A deeply moving picture

Rating: 10/10 (9 January 2015)

Yes, the acting in this movie is all first-rate. David Oyelowo, by far the most striking presence in the movie, will probably get an Oscar nomination for his understated but therefore all the more powerful performance as MLK. (My bet is that the Oscar for Best Actor will go to one of this year's performances of a man suffering from a disease, since that is what the Academy seems to honor most.) What makes this movie so deeply moving, however, at least for me, is 1) the script, which is a masterpiece of organization and character development, and 2) Ava DuVernay's direction, which pulls together a very complex series of elements into a single narrative flow that, though it moves slowly, never once in the 128 minutes loses our attention, or even lets down the almost constant intensity. Nothing is overdone. Nothing is unnecessary. Almost everything is understated. Brief scenes have powerful effects by the placement of a camera, the timing of the dialogue (waiting for MLK to answer his wife's question about whether he loved any of the women he has had affairs with, etc.). People will praise David Oyelowo's performance, and deservedly so. But the real star of this movie is Ms. DuVerney, who makes everyone and everything else look amazing.
At the very end, after all the credits - for which I found some of the music to be the only let-down in the entire picture - there is a statement that this is not a documentary, but rather a feature film that takes the liberties with historical fact that feature films take. And, certainly, it would be interesting to learn where this movie deviates from those facts.
But in the case of this movie, it won't, in a sense, make a lot of difference. This movie makes such a profound effect, using all the tools at the disposal of a first-rate director, that it will be seen by those outside this country as "the truth." It may not be the most-watched American movie around the world during the next few years. But this I can guarantee you: it will, more than any other American movie of the last several years, shape how much of the rest of the world sees us for the next several years.
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A postscript: this morning I read a column by Maureen O'Dowd complaining about the largely negative portrayal of LBJ in this movie. She quoted presidential historians who maintain, evidently with good reason, that Johnson was more pro-active in moving toward civil rights reforms than this movie suggests. That is unfortunate for LBJ's legacy, because the power of this movie, one that is going to be watched over and over again for years to come, is certainly going to trump the work of presidential historians in the minds of the general public even here in the U.S.