Ava DuVernay’s deeply affecting film about Martin Luther King and the 1965 civil rights marches is many things. It’s complex, emotive, beautifully acted and perfectly formed. Most importantly, it’s so inescapably relevant. A crystal clear, unflinching depiction of several vital months in the civil rights movement, it shows how black people were systematically abused, oppressed and murdered, and how even Martin Luther King was used as a political pawn by white men of power.
It shows how far we think we’ve come, and how little has changed.
DuVernay explicitly recreates all these old horrors while implicitly evoking modern ones in her film, starring the superb David Oyelowo as MLK. Focusing on the convulsive political landscape of mid-’60s America, DuVernay not only shows the self-serving manipulations of politicians and presidents and the emergence of vital voices in the black community, but a King confident in his abilities.
This is no highlight-reel origin story – Oyelowo’s King is already a resourceful, commanding strategist; impassioned, empathetic and enraged. He’s also threatening to many, as FBI logs note as they track his movements and send menacing messages to his family.
As protesters are beaten, young men shot, and black women humiliated for wanting to vote, DuVernay’s camera alternately walks alongside marchers and looms above them as they are beaten to the ground. There is necessary discomfort here, placing the audience in the POV of white law enforcement who knocked Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey) to the floor in 1965 and stopped Eric Garner from breathing in 2014. Unlike 12 Years A Slave, there are no white saviours here. It is, rightly, a film about black people, fighting for rights. It’s a snapshot of history, and of the present. Let’s just hope it isn’t a glimpse of the future.