Selma

Rating: 9/10 (11 March 2015)

A chronicle of Martin Luther King's campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965.
Selma stars David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King in the first official theatrically released biopic about the legendary leader. The question is how can this film be the first one? This is sad to have waited for so long and so this film is very welcome. It is a great movie. Firstly, I have to admit that I was a little worried of how sentimental or too romanticised those kind of movie can be, and that, because Biopics have to be inspirational. However here, Selma is not cheesy or melodramatic at all. It takes a very factual look at things that happened on this specific period of his life and more importantly MLK doesn't look God-like, flawless or perfect. The movie doesn't loose that Human focused centre. It doesn't shy away from some of the flaws of the real man that are well known. I found that really interesting because he was first and foremost a human being just like any of us. Obviously he is this iconic leader who march in order to make his point relevant for other people to understand but deep behind, he is just a regular man, with doubts. This is important to show especially when the legends are too big, so the people can identify with the character, he's just like you and me. David Oyelowo is amazing in this film, he really captured what MLK fight for and of all the speeches I've studied he embodies the man spirit perfectly. However, there is no other really interesting character beside MLK which is sad because there were a lot of other people around him who were equally involved with the movement; but Oyelowo as MLK is so damn good that all other characters suffered because of that. Finally, the "normal" scenes when he's home with his wife and children are equally as powerful as the speech scenes. Throughout the whole movie there is this political chest game happening between the government and MLK Civil Right Movement as they're not just marching, actual political issues were involved. Some scenes are hard to watch as that is what happened 50 years ago in Selma, Alabama. That was a really dark time in Human History.
Overall Selma is a very factual and straight forward movie, filled with excellent performances and a very good directing/editing. A powerful movie.