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The film "Selma" (1 Viewer)

Robert Crawford

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One of the best films of the year. A tremendous acting performance by David Oyelowo, who captures the essence of Martin Luther King, but also shows us he was a man with faults like the rest of us. I was young during the 1965 Selma situation, living in Connecticut, so I didn't really grasp the entire situation as it took place. I do remember some of the film's details by watching some of those incidents on TV and listening to my older family members discussing it.


Getting back to the film, the one problem I did have with the film is its depiction of LBJ. I didn't think it was a fair and accurate portrayal of the man and his important role in the Civil Rights movement. I really hope people do further research on the movement and LBJ's role as president before assuming this film is an accurate portrayal of that president. Another case, in which films based on actual historical events/people might not be entirely accurate due to circumstances. These type of films are meant to entertain and perhaps enlighten us, but are meant to give us an accurate history lesson. They're not documentaries.


I'll add more of my comments later as other people express their thoughts in this thread.
 

TravisR

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This was a really good movie. The bulk of my knowledge of Martin Luther King, Jr. comes from what I was taught in school and what I've seen on The History Channel where he's basically depicted as a saint but this movie made the smart move of presenting him as a person who did some great things.


I'm a firm believer that the only way to fix problems in society is to have everyone (regardless of race, religion, gender, financial status, political affiliation, whatever) work together on them so one of the most moving parts of the movie is when people of multiple races join together to overcome a problem. It shows the best of what people can do when they work together rather than arguing, fighting or killing each other.


The most impressive part of David Oyelowo's performance is that when he gives well-known King speeches, he manages to not imitate him but still 'be' the person that he was portraying.
 

mattCR

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I think LBJ got some short shrift, that said, while he did -come around- to the civil rights movement, if you look through his presidential library he also spent a lot of time prior to becoming vice president comiserating with those who felt bad about losing discrimination.


One of the problem is some of the living LBJ aids are also blowing his role way the hell out of proportion.. far more than Selma does.


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/selma_and_lbj_why_critics_are_wrong_about_how_the_film_portrays_president.html
Even harsher is former Johnson staffer Joseph A. Califano Jr., who accuses DuVernay of taking “trumped-up license with a true story that didn’t need any embellishment to work as a big-screen historical drama.” “In fact,” writes Califano, “Selma was LBJ’s idea.”




That’s a huge exaggeration. Activists had been organizing in Selma, Alabama, for at least two years before Martin Luther King Jr. met with Johnson, and weeks prior to his meeting with the president, King and his allies had decided on Selma as the site for new action and protests. By the time Johnson suggested something similar to King, the plan was already in motion.

LBJ fans take a bit too much credit. LBJ was not in favor of moving on civil rights voting legislation moving as fast as it did though he was a much stronger advocate than the film makes him out to be.


It's a mixed bag. I'd say it's about 95% on point. Remember, early in his term LBJ was focused on poverty as his key issue, and white house tapes pretty well confirm that he asked others to put everything on hold until that was sorted out - he viewed that as a way to make even issues like voting easier to accomplish.


LBJ also gets the big moment in the film at the end, announcing that he is moving forward with legislation, so I though it was one that treated him better than many autobiographies. There were a few moments I think could have been cleaned up and made better, but there wasn't anything that wasn't anything 'cut from whole cloth' as some in the super pro-LBJ camp want, and the big sin is time compression, pushing too many events too close together to make it look as though King changed LBJ's mind. When it was much more Bobby Kennedy's potential run for the white house that changed LBJ's mind ;)
 

Robert Crawford

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As Andrew Young stated, the movie was 95% accurate, but what the movie had wrong was LBJ and King's relationship. They worked closely together on getting Civil Rights laws enacted during that time.
 

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I liked the movie, but there are problems as people have noted....


from historian David Kaiser as published in Time Magazine:

"....its portrayal of Lyndon Johnson and his role in the passage of the Voting Rights Act could hardly be more wrong. And this is important not merely for the sake of fidelity to the past, but because of continuing implications for how we see our racial problems and how they could be solved.

Selma suffers as a piece of history, I would guess, because director Ava DuVernay and writer Paul Webb overcompensated for the flaws of movies like Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi. Such movies have been justifiably criticized for exaggerating the role of whites compared to blacks in the Civil Rights movement, and for introducing black characters only to have them killed or terrorized. Selma stands this paradigm on its head. With only one exception—federal judge Frank Johnson—the white characters in Selma are either villains (including LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, George Wallace and Sheriff Clark of Selma), timid wimps, or victims (Unitarian minister James Reeb, who is misidentified at one point as a priest and talks like an Evangelical, and Detroit mother Viola Liuzzo, both of whom were killed by Alabama whites). Crucially, until its last few minutes, the film presents LBJ as the main obstacle to what King is trying to do. There was no shortage of real white villains in the Selma controversy, but LBJ was not one of them. This portrayal depends upon a complete misrepresentation not only of the facts, but also of specific conversations that King and Johnson had during this period....."


http://time.com/3658593/selma-lbj-history/
 

Bob Cashill

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The movie is about the tension between activism and politics. Both men come around and unite in their common goal, to applause from the audience. I think the complaints about Johnson's portrayal are out of proportion to his screen time and actions.

No one would sit through a 100 percent accurate historical film, if such a thing were possible or desirable; deadly dull. Unlike the dreary, paint by numbers Imitation Game and Theory of Everything, Selma actually has a POV about what it's covering and its continuing relevance. It's exasperating when the history police descend upon a movie that actually has something to convey, and paint it as misguided and/or racist.
 

Mark Booth

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We saw 'Selma' today and my wife and I both loved it. Best movie of 2015! :) The Booth Bijou gives it 5 out of 5 stars.


And it is NOT a documentary so I did not expect it to be 100% factual. Anyone that has a hair up their butt over how one or another character is presented needs to get off their butt and make their own documentary to present the "facts". Otherwise, shut up and eat the popcorn and judge the movie for what it is... a film based on a true story but certainly not 100% accurate to history.


Mark
 

RobertR

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I've heard of dramatic license, but what I don't get is why the filmmakers thought it was "necessary" to inaccurately portray LBJ. Did they really think it made for better drama? Seems to me the truth is plenty dramatic without doing that.
 

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From what little I've read of people talking about LBJ in Selma, it seems like people are blowing the factual inaccuracies out of proportion. To me, movie LBJ isn't really a villain (certainly not in the same way that the sheriff or Wallace are) because he intends to make good on his promises to King but he's just playing politics and plans on taking his time because he knows that a lot of people are going to have problems with the kind of changes that were coming. That's not to say that playing politics is a good thing given the situation but the way people are reacting, you'd think the movie is portraying Johnson as a member of the KKK.


The historical inaccuracies are worth mentioning but there's a lot more important things from this movie to think and talk about than LBJ. However, the only talk and press I've really seen regarding this movie (myself included) is about Johnson's depiction.
 

Colin Jacobson

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Saw this yesterday, and I'm on the side who thinks the movie DOES make LBJ look like a bad guy - an obstructionist at best, a patronizing racist at worst.


Seems like every scene between LBJ and MLK makes LBJ look like a jerk while MLK displays an exasperated expression. I don't think the movie makes it look like any kind of partnership - it makes it look like LBJ fought MLK's ideas.


And then when LBJ meets with Wallace, the movie makes them look like pals. The movie also kinda sorta has LBJ use "the N-word" - the term is slurred enough that it's not clear if he might say "negro" instead. I suspect that was intentional: it leaves the impression LBJ used "the N-word" but the filmmakers can claim he didn't.


I think it's an okay movie but even if I ignore the historical issues, I think it's not great. I don't think there's a lot of depth to it - it feels like a mini-series that got severely edited into a two-hour product. It opens threads that it leaves untouched, such as the introduction of Malcolm X. We see him chat with Mrs. King - and that's it. What's the point?


I could also live without the stunt casting - especially when we get Oprah, who seems to have cast herself as a civil rights heroine mainly to pat herself on the back. I know that any big actor in a small role can be a distraction, but with Oprah, the effect gets magnified because she's not normally viewed as an actor so we still don't really expect to see her in movies. Every time she pops on screen, it takes me out of the movie.


The movie just seems safe and bland to me. There's little real drama, and even the events that should have an emotional impact don't. It's like a Spielberg take on events that embraces the soft, sticky side of Spielberg. The movie needs some grit and tension...
 

Robert Crawford

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Colin Jacobson said:
Saw this yesterday, and I'm on the side who thinks the movie DOES make LBJ look like a bad guy - an obstructionist at best, a patronizing racist at worst.


Seems like every scene between LBJ and MLK makes LBJ look like a jerk while MLK displays an exasperated expression. I don't think the movie makes it look like any kind of partnership - it makes it look like LBJ fought MLK's ideas.


And then when LBJ meets with Wallace, the movie makes them look like pals. The movie also kinda sorta has LBJ use "the N-word" - the term is slurred enough that it's not clear if he might say "negro" instead. I suspect that was intentional: it leaves the impression LBJ used "the N-word" but the filmmakers can claim he didn't.


I think it's an okay movie but even if I ignore the historical issues, I think it's not great. I don't think there's a lot of depth to it - it feels like a mini-series that got severely edited into a two-hour product. It opens threads that it leaves untouched, such as the introduction of Malcolm X. We see him chat with Mrs. King - and that's it. What's the point?


I could also live without the stunt casting - especially when we get Oprah, who seems to have cast herself as a civil rights heroine mainly to pat herself on the back. I know that any big actor in a small role can be a distraction, but with Oprah, the effect gets magnified because she's not normally viewed as an actor so we still don't really expect to see her in movies. Every time she pops on screen, it takes me out of the movie.


The movie just seems safe and bland to me. There's little real drama, and even the events that should have an emotional impact don't. It's like a Spielberg take on events that embraces the soft, sticky side of Spielberg. The movie needs some grit and tension...
Or that Oprah, who grew up in the segregated south views the civil rights movement more so than what you just stated.
 

Bob Cashill

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Disagree. Without making much fuss about it the movie effortlessly links the events of 65 to today's dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and other ills that the heroes of yesteryear could not overcome. (The ever politicking Johnson was everyone's friend, at least for a few minutes. My audience cheered him, too.) it's quietly angry, unlike Unbroken, The Theory of Everything, and The Imitation Game, which traffic in their own evasions and offer nothing in the way of POV. That absence is safe and bland, biopic pablum.
 

TravisR

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Colin Jacobson said:
And then when LBJ meets with Wallace, the movie makes them look like pals.
To me, it seemed like he was thinking "Now I have to deal with this stupid fuck" and any 'friendliness' was just condescension on Johnson's part.


Colin Jacobson said:
The movie also kinda sorta has LBJ use "the N-word" - the term is slurred enough that it's not clear if he might say "negro" instead. I suspect that was intentional: it leaves the impression LBJ used "the N-word" but the filmmakers can claim he didn't.
He definitely said 'the n-word' in that scene. Given the time that the man grew up, it's ridiculous to think that it would be a word that he never uttered.
 

Colin Jacobson

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TravisR said:
He definitely said 'the n-word' in that scene. Given the time that the man grew up, it's ridiculous to think that it would be a word that he never uttered.

I'm sure he did, but the word's usage in the movie does nothing other than make the audience view LBJ as a racist. Most people who see the movie aren't going to think about the context of the era - they're just going to hear the "N-word" and think "LBJ was racist"...
 

Colin Jacobson

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Robert Crawford said:
Or that Oprah, who grew up in the segregated south views the civil rights movement more so than what you just stated.

Not sure what this means. Oprah had to be in the movie because she spent some time in the segregated south?
 

TravisR

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Colin Jacobson said:
I'm sure he did, but the word's usage in the movie does nothing other than make the audience view LBJ as a racist. Most people who see the movie aren't going to think about the context of the era - they're just going to hear the "N-word" and think "LBJ was racist"...
That's a very valid point.
 

Mark Booth

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The reality is: It was more "accepted" to be racist in 1965 and, thus, more people outwardly displayed their racism. Whether or not the real LBJ used the "N-word" is unimportant because this film is NOT a documentary. What IS important is that we still have far too many people in this country that use that word and mean it in the most hateful and disrespectful way. We still have far too many people in this country that judge someone because of the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.


If a film like 'Selma' (which is NOT a documentary) helps to drive home the true evil that is racism, then BRAVO to the filmmakers!!


Mark
 

Neil Middlemiss

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Colin Jacobson said:
I could also live without the stunt casting - especially when we get Oprah, who seems to have cast herself as a civil rights heroine mainly to pat herself on the back. I know that any big actor in a small role can be a distraction, but with Oprah, the effect gets magnified because she's not normally viewed as an actor so we still don't really expect to see her in movies. Every time she pops on screen, it takes me out of the movie.

Oprah turned down the role many, many times but was pursued by the director. She ultimately accepted the role after hearing the person she would be playing was a fan of the Oprah Show, and she decided to do it to honor her life.
 

Robert Crawford

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Colin Jacobson said:
Not sure what this means. Oprah had to be in the movie because she spent some time in the segregated south?
This film was personal to her and those that acted in it and lived the reality of the situation. You appear to have a grudge against her. If so expect me to defend her as we attended the same college at the same time.
 

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Robert Crawford said:
This film was personal to her and those that acted in it and lived the reality of the situation. You appear to have a grudge against her. If so expect me to defend her as we attended the same college at the same time.

Did she ever offer to promote your book in her book club? Did she ever invite you on her show? No? Then what the hell are you defending her for? The snobby [BLEEP]. ;)
 

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