OK entertainment, not so good history

Rating: 5/10 (26 January 2015)

If you are looking for entertainment about the civil rights era (a real challenge if you know anything about the civil rights period), and you have no problems with the historical revisionism of the movie, then this is a film you might like. Although I find the idea of making an entertaining film about one of the ugliest periods of American history a fool's errand, I guess the director is entitled to make the attempt to entertain us. . On the other hand, given that the subject matter of the film is the pivotal, dramatic, and violent clashes involving the racist political structures of Selma and Alabama, and the key players of the civil rights movement, one would think that the directory and screen play would capitalize on these dramatic historical events in a compelling retelling of this part of American history. They failed to tell history truthfully. . I had heard about the problems in the portrayal of LBJ in the film, but I didn't realize that historical time lines were also tinkered with for dramatic effect.
*** SPOILER ALERTS ***
The film starts with Coretta and Martin just before his Nobel award in October of 1964, and then the second scene jumps back more than a year to September of 1963 and the "16th Street Baptist Church bombing" where 4 young girls were killed (there is no subtitle to clue in the audience that these scenes were more than a year earlier). They used his 1964 Nobel speech to juxtapose against events that appear to happen at the same time.
It was clear right from the beginning that the writer and director were not interested in historical accuracy, they were interested in creating their own mythology around historical events. The historical inaccuracy characterizing LBJ as dead set against civil rights and voting rights for blacks is proof that the makers of this film have an agenda to lionize and then canonize MLK. The problem I with the film makers is that don't have to lie about the facts to convince us that MLK was a great man.
In conclusion, if you are looking for entertainment, there are a lot of other popcorn films that are far better. For history on the civil rights era, better check out the PBS documentary series "Eyes on the Prize" (1987 six one hour episodes) and the follow up second season in 1990 of eight one hour episodes).