The image we're greeted with at the
onset of Selma, staring directly at us, is the face of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. But this is not the Dr. King we know from the
sound bites and TV footage that immortalized him as a mighty orator
with a famous dream. This Dr. King looks uncomfortable, restless and
out of his element as he rehearses his Noble Peace Prize acceptance
speech in the privacy of his hotel suite.
The Dr. King he himself sees in the
mirror is unfamiliar to him as well; All dressed up to accept an
award for peace when he knows how much violence and struggle is yet
to be endured in his campaign for civil rights. Just as he gazes at
his reflection, contemplating how far he's come and how far he's
still to go, so too does Selma hold a mirror up to modern
America and ask its people to consider the same questions.
Director Ava DuVernay (working from her
largely rewritten draft of an original script by Paul Webb) has no
intention of taking the easy way around the story of the protest
marches King led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, or of dampering
its echoes in the troubled racial politics of today. Though set in
the summer of '65, it is a film very much about the here and now,
told with a verve and vitality that historical docudramas often lack.
