![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Just finished watching the Oscar nominated film Selma, which was better than expected. It did not quite fall into the same traps as so many other bio-pics and historical adaptations. Unlike both The Theory of Everything and The Imagination Game which made the mistake of focusing on the lead character's romantic life or lack thereof, Selma focused on how Dr. Martin Luther King strategized the Civil Rights Movement by focusing solely on a specific instance, and a climatic one within it - the historic march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 which lead to LBJ and congress adopting the Voting Rights Act. (Yes, everyone had the legal right to vote under federal law and under the Constitution. But the devil was in the implementation. Various Southern States had found bureaucratic ways, little local laws, etc to prevent black Americans from voting. The Voting Rights Act did away with that - or was supposed to. They've found ways around it in recent times, hence the - re-march on Selma this year.)
I'm not sure the rest of world understands the American Civil Rights Movement or the affects of black slavery, Jim Crow, and racism in the US. I realized this when I was reading various European responses to Harper Lee's Go Set The Watchman and the iconic status of To Kill a Mockingbird. For many Americans or residents of the US, if you prefer, To Kill a Mockingbird, which took place years earlier in the same region, and Go Set The Watchman which takes place around the same time - the story is visceral. Particularly if you were alive in the 1950s-1960s.
Was discussing this with my mother tonight, who spoke of her parents. Kind good people. But racist.
They weren't discriminatory. They helped the "blacks" in their neighborhood. But they felt the blacks stayed over there. And why should things change. Things were fine the way they were. From their perspective nothing needed to change.
It's not all that different from the folks today who don't understand why we should embrace same-sex marriage, or transgender, or gender equality. Or even do anything about climate change. Why should they disrupt their lives? Why should things change? Aren't things fine the way they are? Which various white characters from George Wallace to LBG and John Edger Hoover all state at various points in the movie Selma.
The movie gets across, and quite well, why things need to change. Why you can't stay oomplacent. It also gets across why violence doesn't work. There's a great scene in the middle of the film when one of Dr. King's associates, I believe it was Mr. Young, explains to one of the people in the march - why fighting fire with fire won't work.
"So you get guns? How can you get? What type? A .38? A rifle? They have machine guns. They have tanks. They have helicopters. We won't win that way. That's not how we win. We win by not fighting through violence. We have to find another way."
Violence never solves anything. It's the one message, Dr. King repeatedly endlessly. That non-violent resistance, protest, and persistence got things done. And he was right - he accomplished more than Malcome X - who gets killed in 1965, several years before Dr. King was killed.
Selma is overall a moving film, that focuses on both the men and women of the Selma march, how they planned it and put it together. [It is also a controversial film for many Americans, who felt that white agitators who aided in the movement were underrepresented, and only shown to be involved later. While I understand the criticism, I find it ironically amusing, considering how history books and various historical films about these moments by white male directors - write women and black men are either written into the sidelines or as villains, as if they are unimportant. What's interesting about Selma, and even Lee Daniels - "the Butler" is that the white men are written into the sidelines or as villains. Nice to see the flip. Whine all you like about it, but you do reap what you sow.]
Is it a great film? No. I'd say it is flawed in places. Coretta Scott King barely registers. And it drug in a few places. But, that said, I preferred it to the other ones I'd seen that were all nominated. Right now of the films nominated for best picture that I'd seen -- I think Selma and Birdman lead the pack. I didn't like The Grand Budapest Hotel (it bored me and my attention wandered during it, but my Russian co-worker adored it), Theory of Everything had an amazing performance by Eddie Redymond (I can see why he won over the guy who played King and Michael Keaton, his performance is truly amazing) but little else to recommend it, and Imagination Game was good in places but manipulated history to pull at emotion which left a bitter aftertaste. Birdman was a brilliant character piece about the creation of art against impossible odds, and criticism. And Selma is a rather good film about a pivotal period in US history, and how to plan, strategize and effectively lead a protest movement. I can see why it was required viewing by the social activists in my church.
Also saw the oscar nominated The Tale of Princess Kaguya this week, which is an interesting piece of Japanese anime. Along with the oscar nominated The Book of Life - which frankly reminded me a bit too much of a video game in places, and the computer animation got on my nerves - story was good in places, the whole day of dead thing rather fun and innovative, but the overall plot? Sigh. Bored now. I mean seriously how many different ways can we tell a story about two men fighting over a woman, then coming together to fight for the good of their town? Come up with something new... oh look, they did in the The Tale of the Princess Kaguya - which actually may be something old. It's based on an old Japanese Folk Tale, the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. And is at its heart about how Japanese men objectify women or view women. The Bamboo Cutter finds the Princess in a bamboo, a tiny little thing who can fit into the palm of his hand. He sees her as a celestial being, a Princess, who should be revered, and in a castle with pretty things. Her mother sees her as child to be nurtured. The story is rather long, and slow in places. And the art quite different than what we are used to. All hand drawn, with a sparse amount of color...it feels as if you are flipping through an old Japanese scroll and reading the folk tale as you go.
Here's a trailer of it:
I found it to be rather haunting in regards to its many themes. About humanity, and how women are viewed. The trailer sort of gets it all across.
I sort of wish it won the award. Although I haven't seen Big Hero 8, which did.
I'm not sure the rest of world understands the American Civil Rights Movement or the affects of black slavery, Jim Crow, and racism in the US. I realized this when I was reading various European responses to Harper Lee's Go Set The Watchman and the iconic status of To Kill a Mockingbird. For many Americans or residents of the US, if you prefer, To Kill a Mockingbird, which took place years earlier in the same region, and Go Set The Watchman which takes place around the same time - the story is visceral. Particularly if you were alive in the 1950s-1960s.
Was discussing this with my mother tonight, who spoke of her parents. Kind good people. But racist.
They weren't discriminatory. They helped the "blacks" in their neighborhood. But they felt the blacks stayed over there. And why should things change. Things were fine the way they were. From their perspective nothing needed to change.
It's not all that different from the folks today who don't understand why we should embrace same-sex marriage, or transgender, or gender equality. Or even do anything about climate change. Why should they disrupt their lives? Why should things change? Aren't things fine the way they are? Which various white characters from George Wallace to LBG and John Edger Hoover all state at various points in the movie Selma.
The movie gets across, and quite well, why things need to change. Why you can't stay oomplacent. It also gets across why violence doesn't work. There's a great scene in the middle of the film when one of Dr. King's associates, I believe it was Mr. Young, explains to one of the people in the march - why fighting fire with fire won't work.
"So you get guns? How can you get? What type? A .38? A rifle? They have machine guns. They have tanks. They have helicopters. We won't win that way. That's not how we win. We win by not fighting through violence. We have to find another way."
Violence never solves anything. It's the one message, Dr. King repeatedly endlessly. That non-violent resistance, protest, and persistence got things done. And he was right - he accomplished more than Malcome X - who gets killed in 1965, several years before Dr. King was killed.
Selma is overall a moving film, that focuses on both the men and women of the Selma march, how they planned it and put it together. [It is also a controversial film for many Americans, who felt that white agitators who aided in the movement were underrepresented, and only shown to be involved later. While I understand the criticism, I find it ironically amusing, considering how history books and various historical films about these moments by white male directors - write women and black men are either written into the sidelines or as villains, as if they are unimportant. What's interesting about Selma, and even Lee Daniels - "the Butler" is that the white men are written into the sidelines or as villains. Nice to see the flip. Whine all you like about it, but you do reap what you sow.]
Is it a great film? No. I'd say it is flawed in places. Coretta Scott King barely registers. And it drug in a few places. But, that said, I preferred it to the other ones I'd seen that were all nominated. Right now of the films nominated for best picture that I'd seen -- I think Selma and Birdman lead the pack. I didn't like The Grand Budapest Hotel (it bored me and my attention wandered during it, but my Russian co-worker adored it), Theory of Everything had an amazing performance by Eddie Redymond (I can see why he won over the guy who played King and Michael Keaton, his performance is truly amazing) but little else to recommend it, and Imagination Game was good in places but manipulated history to pull at emotion which left a bitter aftertaste. Birdman was a brilliant character piece about the creation of art against impossible odds, and criticism. And Selma is a rather good film about a pivotal period in US history, and how to plan, strategize and effectively lead a protest movement. I can see why it was required viewing by the social activists in my church.
Also saw the oscar nominated The Tale of Princess Kaguya this week, which is an interesting piece of Japanese anime. Along with the oscar nominated The Book of Life - which frankly reminded me a bit too much of a video game in places, and the computer animation got on my nerves - story was good in places, the whole day of dead thing rather fun and innovative, but the overall plot? Sigh. Bored now. I mean seriously how many different ways can we tell a story about two men fighting over a woman, then coming together to fight for the good of their town? Come up with something new... oh look, they did in the The Tale of the Princess Kaguya - which actually may be something old. It's based on an old Japanese Folk Tale, the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. And is at its heart about how Japanese men objectify women or view women. The Bamboo Cutter finds the Princess in a bamboo, a tiny little thing who can fit into the palm of his hand. He sees her as a celestial being, a Princess, who should be revered, and in a castle with pretty things. Her mother sees her as child to be nurtured. The story is rather long, and slow in places. And the art quite different than what we are used to. All hand drawn, with a sparse amount of color...it feels as if you are flipping through an old Japanese scroll and reading the folk tale as you go.
Here's a trailer of it:
I found it to be rather haunting in regards to its many themes. About humanity, and how women are viewed. The trailer sort of gets it all across.
I sort of wish it won the award. Although I haven't seen Big Hero 8, which did.