the work that goes into a revolution

Rating: 10/10 (19 January 2015)

Selma, about the events leading up to the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and how Martin Luther King and his group faced adversity at every turn to get equal voting rights, is one of the better films this year (that is to say, it's just shy of my top 10 list, but it's still really really really good).
Oyelowo and director DuVernay turned in fantastic work. I can see why you'd say the filmmaking does matter here. What I loved about the movie were actually the little moments, quiet scenes where King is trying to figure out what he'll write or talking in hushed tones in a prison cell, or (what I didn't expect) the scene where the extramarital question is raised and done in brilliant drama between King and his wife - that is particularly a wonderful scene with so much weight in this room that is surrounded by the threat of death, but it still all comes down to love.
Is it a perfect film? May be not, but it really is directed and presented with vitality and especially now it's more (sadly) relevant than ever between the cop murders and voter disenfranchisement in the south. When you're watching scenes that are really set pieces for the major events that unfold with people being beaten and killed ruthlessly, it's hard to watch - which is the point. DuVernay doesn't turn away, and gives it the harrowing edge of an action film. If she is at all manipulative as a filmmaker, it's for the right reasons for this story. Get people taking notice, not sitting there too complacent at a boilerplate story of black uprising. The way she shoots and executes the action, and how the actors play it - it matters.
Oh, and to briefly address this because it's come up: and Johnson doesn't really come off that well in the film. But you know what? He's not the main focus of the movie anyway. Selma is; even King is, even as the leader, still just a part of the puzzle. He doesn't seem like the most high-minded president, but as a CHARACTER, not a historical figure, he works well for the conflict of the film. If King could walk into the Oval office, ask for voting rights for African-Americans, and LBJ goes 'alright', there's no movie.
certainly has more conflict about him as a politician than George Wallace (both Wilkinson and Roth are good on screen, if over-shadowed by Oyelowo and Carmen Ojojo Coretta Scott King), and ultimately I was okay with his portrayal in the MOVIE. If I want more I can check out the Caro books or, when the time comes, Cranston as LBJ when the HBO movie comes out this year.
The filmmaking is just so charged and vital, but DuVernay knows how to make her film in tones of darkness - a room will be without light, but she has a way of getting us to feel the presence in a room, that weight that King carries is made cinematic as far as being a moral figure who still has to stay alive and keep his family alive. The filmmakers knew it was a subject that has 'Important' going in to it. The question is how to make the performances count - and almost all of them do - and how to make scenes move and flow dramatically speaking.
Even supporting characters like John Lewis gets a strong turn and dimension, and one scene where an 82 year old man, who has lost a family member due to police brutality, has a hear-to-heart with King, it's impossible not to feel the emotion there, and it works. Selma works.