If there is an Ava DuVernay fan club, I would like to pledge my membership. I’m not hanging my cap on a “winner” because she’s winning. I am humbled because she would have kept moving toward her goal even without “Selma.”
DuVernay has that “Mother Earth–survived the Middle Passage” strength that reminds you that all of us have that pedigree blood line. It’s how we use it and why that matters.
It was that DNA that coursed through the veins of the people who, on March 7, 1965, followed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s lead to show their commitment to justice in a nonviolent manner. It was in Selma, Ala., where “prejudice” and it’s ugly cousin “violence” were the norm.
That day, most knew they would be hurt. All knew they might be killed. No one stopped, and no one lifted a hand toward violence.
I suspect none knew that they would be an indelible part of history. Later it would be called “Bloody Sunday” and mark a vital change of popular opinion in a divided nation. It’s also the date of my mother’s birthday, so it’s rather dear to my heart.
Opening nationwide Jan. 9, “Selma” highlights those dramatic events that changed the course of America and the modern concept of civil rights—culminating in the triumphant final march and the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
History buffs should rest easy, the details around the political battles in the halls of power to the grit and faith of people on the street are displayed. But it’s the inner struggles that King and his wife, Coretta, faced that make this film so remarkable and touching.
Here is what DuVernay, a former publicist and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe, had to share about showing a man, not an icon, and still “feel urgent and vital … not like a dusty history book”:
“I think no one here wanted to make a film about a statue, speech, street name or a catchphrase, all the things that I feel King has been reduced to in a lot of ways. He was a dynamic and charismatic, with a brilliant mind. He was a man of faith who was sometimes unfaithful, he was guilty, he was depressed, he had an ego, he liked to laugh, he was a prankster, he was a human being. And there hasn’t been a film made with King at the center released by a studio—ever. And so when we were charged to do it, our main goal was to show him in all of his human complexity and kind of unlock him from the statue and let him live and breathe and tell the story through that lens.”
The critics have echoed an Oscar buzz, which is warranted but not surprising once you see “Selma.”
DuVernay is a thinker, a left brain–right brain mover, and the results of that percolating gray matter, tenderly tethered to her warm heart, is what has helped make “Selma” feel so authentic.
On the subject of character, the director offered this: “To focus on story and character, you have to be telling the truth about people. That’s the only way to do that. It’s also what attracted the caliber of the cast, our collaborators, as well as our department heads—just geniuses at what they do. So it wasn’t a risk [telling the truth]. It was the only thing to be done.”
The recent rallies to protest the lack of justice after the deaths of unarmed people such as Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Akai Gurley and the continued police brutality against unarmed Black men eerily share similarities with the events that take place in the movie.
DuVernay added, “I think it is a jaw-dropping thing that this piece of art can meet this cultural moment. This film is about voice, and this film is about being heard.”
On the dismantling of voting rights, DuVernay registered surprise and this insight: “While making the film, the Voting Rights Act was on my mind. I thought it would be a big topic as we presented the film. The dismantling of the very act that we are chronicling—the violence to that act that has happened and is hard to put back together.”