Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Wilkinson, Giovanni Ribisi, Tim Roth, Clay Chappell, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Andre Holland, Colman Domingo, Omar J. Dorsey, Common, Tessa Thompson, David Dwyer, David Morizot, Dylan Baker, Wendell Pierce, Trai Byers, Keith Stanfield, Stan Houston, Nigel Thatch, Tara Ochs, Cuba Gooding Jr., Michael Shikany, Martin Sheen.
History has a nasty peculiar habit of repeating itself when one is not vigilant to the evils carried out in the name of a God or humanity’s greed. The world over, even today, repressed people are beaten for exercising their right to vote, for wanting a say in how their lives should be lived, governed by liberal laws and without fear of the whip, the fist or the gunshot, getting in their way of Universal Suffrage.
The pricking a nation’s conscious is rarely caught on camera, even less so in the fledgling days of early news bulletins that might appear just twice a day. For the black citizens of Selma, Alabama, that abscess that had been allowed to build up in the name of segregation and poverty, ruled over in a system of fear and deprivation, all came to a head and it took one man’s vision to take on a state determined to keep people of all creeds and ethnicity, to the point where law was changed; but with great personal loss. Such was the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the collision point in American history that was Selma.
When it was proclaimed by the esteemed Colin Welland at the Oscars ceremonies all those years ago that, “The British are coming”, little could he have foreseen that in just over 30 years two of the best films to come out of America, perhaps arguably two of the most critically important films of the 21st Century so far, would have British actors playing the leads of the men who helped shape the United States of America as it is today. In David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson and Tim Roth, the producers could not have cast three greater actors to portray the roles of Martin Luther King, President Johnson and Governor George Wallace. Each of these actor’s portrayals was scintillating and demonstrated huge commitment to the cause. In David Oyelowo, the transformation into the preacher who placed trust in his God to see him through and who, alongside President’s Kennedy and Roosevelt and Neil Armstrong should be seen as one of the most influential men of 20th Century America, changed the way that many people think in what is sometimes an isolationist looking country.
Mr. Oyelowo is consummate throughout Selma, eerily so. Though you should not close your eyes during a film, unless of course it is of the quality pertaining to be epic in Serena, to do so just for a moment, just for the briefest of time in which a speech is being made, is to understand the greatness that resided in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Whatever medium of thought Mr. Oyelowo employed to channel the persona of Dr. King, it worked with the very greatest of compliments to the film and for future audiences. An astonishingly captured piece of work, a deftness in artistry only rivalled by fellow British actor Eddie Redmayne as Professor Stephen Hawking.
If Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave left you conscious-striken, then Selma will teach you a valuable lesson in history and will leave you feeling ashamed.
One of the great moments in the peaceful war sought by American civil liberty groups, one of the defining moments in American history and a film which still sadly shows that the fight for equality is still on-going the world over.
Ian D. Hall