Voting With Your Feet

The 2015 movie year is off to a glorious start with the wide release of Selma. What? You don't want to see a history movie? That stuff is old and boring? Besides, things have changed and we don't need to be dwelling on the past, right?

Pfffft. I'm with Faulkner on this one. The past truly isn't dead.

Selma's taking a few hits, primarily for its portrayal of LBJ. Having seen the film, I don't get that. Pres. Johnson in no way comes across as the villain of the piece; rather, he is shown to be a politician with ambitious goals. He cautions Dr. King to slow down, the time is not yet ripe for these large-scale changes in the Deep South - and Johnson fears he can't deliver the votes he needs to pass legislation that will essentially take a sledgehammer to Jim Crow. (You know, it's odd how a man's legacy gets undone. Johnson delivered on what Kennedy only had to promise - this single man muscled through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and strengthened both the Clean Air and the Clean Water Acts, but he also escalated Vietnam, which became his defining legacy. Likewise, Alabama governor George Wallace was a champion for the poor, but his dogged insistence on maintaining the Jim Crow status quo [hmm - the "status Crow"?] is all that people remember.)

We forget. That's one reason Selma matters. We forget the sheer, raw courage it took to walk into a low-level county office and demand the petty official accept a government form. We forget the everyday indignities that were visited on our own citizens who insisted, often with an astonishing amount of grace, on being treated as full human beings. We forget how much was at stake when citizens just wanted to walk across a bridge.

People are awful. But we can change - even if it takes TV cameras to get us to do it.

Selma is going to be a heavy-hitter during awards season. And it should. No, it's not a documentary - King's speeches are approximations, since apparently the King family would not permit the actual words to be used, having licensed them to another studio for another project. Selma is not a love-fest - people are flawed, a fact Selma does not shy away from and which I completely appreciate. I want real people, not stained-glass saints. Look, these people - the everyday people (including Viola Liuzzo, whose name you should know), not just the leadership of this movement - are American heroes who stood up for the principles this country was founded on and made such a dignified, consistent nuisance of themselves that our politicians had no choice BUT to act.

Go see this movie. Now. Today. Take your kids. Stay for the credits and the the John Legend/Common song "Glory" which reminds us all, in these dark days of #JeSuisCharlie,  "The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful."And if you don't cry in at least a few places, do me a favor and don't tell me.



Before I conclude, the end of the year brought two movies that I saw but didn't post about due to an increased amount of craziness, so let me briefly touch on those.  Exodus is Ridley Scott's attempt to create a modern version of the big-screen Bible epic. He's got a great story here - Conflict! Plagues! Gigantic crowd scenes! The desire for freeeee-dom! - yet the whole movie just never lifts off. There have been loud and frequent complaints about the casting in the film, but trust me - not the only problem here. Also, the final installment of Peter Jackson's take on Tolkien's The Hobbit was just - not very good. I'll freely admit that part of my problem is the add-ons to pad this into a trilogy (look - they're walking in New Zealand! Now there's more walking in New Zealand! Oh, look - they're riding horses in New Zealand!) and in this final installment in what really could have been one stellar film rather than three lackluster ones, things reached a head. Let me just point out two items - first, never, ever, ever use your young son as your steadying point with a gigantic arrow. I'm pretty sure the fletching would rip his shoulder to shreds. Second - while I can appreciate the over-the-topness of Billy Connelly riding a boar into battle, the same cannot be said for the elf-leader's war moose. Ugh.

Also, there were so many films at the end of the year that didn't come around here - and I try to keep this a "local" blog. Still, I intend to seek out The Imitation Game, Big Eyes, The Theory of Everything, and Boyhood to name but a few.

Dignity in Labor

Today is Labor Day in America and let's take just a moment in the midst of the summer cookouts and end-of-wearing-white to think about that.  Labor Day was not begun as a de facto end of summer celebration; rather, the holiday has its roots in bloody protest.  Workers, fed up, took to the streets to demand better working conditions and we should all be grateful.  The 40-hour work week, worker's compensation, and end to child labor - these are all direct results of the labor movement in this country.

Work should have dignity.

That notion is at the heart of the soul of Lee Daniels' The Butler.  (The long title is the result of an earlier movie called The Butler, but I'm going to truncate it from here on in this post.)  The Butler is one of those "inspired by actual events" movies and those can get tricky.  Let me make this point clear - this is not a biopic.  The character of Cecil Gaines (played by Forest Whitaker) is based on Eugene Allen, who served in the White House through eight administrations and saw history change and swoop and reverse itself.  Other characters are fictionalized to the point of being flat-out made-up.  (You can fact check The Butler here and here, and I'm sure there are plenty of other sources as well.)

Here's the thing - I don't care.  The overarching history of this film is solid, while the question of "did X really happen to Y?" doesn't interest me all that much, since the film is not pretending to be a biopic.  The civil rights movement proceeded in fits and starts.  Not all white people were horrible, but many were.  Not all black people agreed with Dr. King, but many did.  And the violence was widespread, ugly, and all too frequent.  Our history is a bloody one and we like the sanitize that by saying, "Oh, let's not dwell on that.  It's so unpleasant and now things are different."

Really?  Tell that to the black teenager who gets followed in a store.  Tell it to the woman who gets paid 20% less than her male counterpart for doing the same job.  Tell it to the gay couple who can't file a joint state tax return.  Tell it to the Sikh wearing a turban, or the Muslim woman wearing a headscarf, or, or, or.

We have yet to fulfill the promises of the Preamble.  We're doing better at "securing the blessings of Liberty," but no, we're not there yet.  The Butler shows us how far we've come.  It's a movie that we all need to see.  This isn't "black history."  It's our history.  Also, the star-studded cast is astonishing to watch - I won't even try to list all of the main performers, much less the smaller roles.  Just - go see this.  Take children.  Parts of this movie are harsh to watch.  I'm willing to bet they were harsher to live through.