Review: "Selma"

Director: Ava DuVernay
Runtime: 104 minutes

It seems unthinkable that a figure like Martin Luther King Jr. hasn't been the center of a major film until this year. If Hollywood can greenlight a movie about the woman who invented Tupperware, surely they can make room for one of the most iconic activists in history. After much needless back and forth (because apparently vast sections of the industry see Martin Luther friggin' King as a subject with slim appeal), King has finally be granted his moment in the cinematic sunlight. Yet unlike so many historical biopics, Ava DuVernay's Selma opts for a limited focus, which only magnifies its emotional and intellectual power. In confining her film to a period of six months, Selma achieves what decades-spanning historical dramas wish they could do.

DuVernay's previous two features, including 2012's excellent Middle of Nowhere, have always been intimate, so it's no surprise to see her avoid a purposefully epic scope. And yet what she has pulled off with Selma is thrillingly expansive as it unpacks the myriad angles of the later stages of the Civil Rights Movement. Selma only covers the run up and duration of King's march from Selma to Montgomery, but the film still feels like a comprehensive drama without turning into a history lecture.

The most obvious comparison that springs to mind is Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, a film that also deconstructed an iconic figure. Selma, like Lincoln (which went behind the scenes of the 13th Amendment's passage), opts for humanity rather than hagiography. Dr. King (David Oyelowo) gives his share of rousing speeches, but DuVernay is more interested in picking apart the reasons behind King's speeches and his leadership. Co-written by Paul Webb (DuVernay did a second draft but was, sadly, not able to earn her own credit as a writer), Selma is at its finest when it portrays King as a shrewd, media-savvy tactician. King is met with hesitation by Pres. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), and must take matters into his own hands to keep the Civil Rights Movement in the limelight. Having already delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech and won the Nobel Peace Prize, King sees that it's going to take more to grab the attention of the public and the White House to make meaningful change across the country.

Selma opening scenes feel a bit stale, and they represent the most traditional aspects of the story. But once King's movement relocates to Selma, Alabama for the next stage of their fight, DuVernay's direction blossoms. In one of King's speeches, he remarks that there are intersections of history and injustice where action is the only option for the oppressed and the marginalized. This would be an important point in any year, but the timing of the film's release causes this sentiment to register two-fold. The march to Montgomery was the action of the moment, and Selma has proven to be the film of the moment. DuVernay's staging and shooting of the police brutality against the march is plenty harrowing as a historical dramatization, but it also acts as a solemn reminder of how slowly things have progressed in the decades since.

Though King is undoubtedly the story's anchor, Webb and DuVernay cover an impressive amount of territory without contriving unnecessary subplots. The scenes at the White House lend a complexity to Pres. Johnson and his mixed feelings about how to help King despite the "101 issues" he's also dealing with. Wilkinson starts off a bit cartoonish, but over the course of the narrative he emerges as a fully-formed character. Also quite removed from the central plot is Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo), but the script never forgets her. The film only touches on King's infidelities once, but the scene is a masterclass of dramatic tension and subtlety centered on Ejogo and Oyelowo's powerhouse performances. Even one-off scenes, like Malcolm X's (Nigel Thatch) encounter with Coretta, are inserted with intelligence and restraint that bolsters, rather than distracts from, King's development.

The film wouldn't be complete, however, without a solid leading man. Oyelowo is more than up to the task of capturing King and making him a multifaceted, flawed leader. Even when he speaks, often with great force, to his followers, Oyelowo's performance never devolves into hollow theatrics. Recent events lend an added context to Selma, but King's speeches (DuVernay doesn't have the rights to the originals, and had to create her own) are tremendously powerful and inspiring. 

With such sensitive subject matter, Selma could have easily become manipulative in its historical recreations. Yet the most moving moments in the story come from characters we barely know, like a young protester (Short Term 12's Keith Stanfield) viciously targeted after standing up to Sheriff Jim Clark (Stan Houston). The specific tragedies that befall members of the Civil Rights Movement are just as impactful as King's actions, and lend an even greater emotional weight to Selma's narrative. 

Ironically, the only times when Selma stumbles are when DuVernay tries to shoe-horn in more "modern" filmmaking techniques. In one instance, as protester Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey) is slammed to the ground by police, the film cuts to a shot where it looks as though the camera has been mounted on top of the character, following her movements with an off-putting stillness that undercuts the chaos of the scenario. In another scene, slow motion is used to capture the death of a minor character hitting the ground with a thud, and it looks like something out of a boxing movie. There's a distracting artifice to these brief snippets that seems at odd with the rest of Selma's naturalistic, deep-in-the-trenches visual approach.

Ultimately, these are minor quibbles in an otherwise gripping and insightful drama. DuVernay has said that she doesn't usually care for historical dramas, but she sure as hell proves that she knows how to make a good one. Selma is topical and noteworthy for a whole host of reasons, but none of these should get in the way for praising the film's legitimate artistic merits. Selma's skillful integration of scenes beyond its setting have a way of opening the story and magnifying its impact without straining to be something more. With her third feature, DuVernay has not only made a powerful and socially-conscious drama that registers far beyond its limited scope as it caps off a dynamic year for films written and directed by black artists (and, notably, black women). In striving for intimacy, she has created an unintentional epic that, like King's legacy, is about more than simply having a dream.

Grade: B+/A-

Review: "Belle"

Director: Amma Asante
Runtime: 104 minutes

In one of the first scenes of Belle, the younger version of the title character gazes at a painting of an English nobleman and his black servant. The boy is painted submissively, so as to draw the attention to the important white figure and his commanding gaze. These works of art inform Amma Asante's sophomore feature at every turn, as she turns them on her head. The paintings used people of color to draw focus to white figures, while Asante's film uses a well-known white English cast to draw our focus to a biracial actress. That it does this in a fact-based story set in the 18th century is even more noteworthy. Deceptively radical in its approach to Austen-esque stories of love and manners, Belle is both a rewarding character study and a compassionate work of historical and social commentary. 

Born of a slave woman and an English naval officer (Matthew Goode), Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is left by her father only hours after meeting him. Though Goode's Capt. John Lindsay shows Dido nothing but affection in their brief time together, he's unable to look after her. He leaves her with Lord and Lady Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson), the girl's uncle and aunt, albeit without first informing them of her race. Begrudgingly, the Mansfields accept the girl and treat her well, though they intend to hide her from society as long as possible. Sheltered at the Mansfield estate in the country, Dido grows close to Elizabeth Murray (Sarah Gadon), another charge left with the Mansfields.

Yet Dido's life starts to change as she reaches the age when aristocratic girls were expected to "come out" in order to secure a husband. Though financially secured thanks to her inheritance, Dido still struggles to navigate a society that reduces her to little more than "the black" or "the mulatto." As one character points out, the aristocrats will take any excuse they can to diminish or dismiss one of their ranks.

However, even with all of the outings and courtship rituals, Belle remains a lively piece of drama. Asante and Misan Sagay's script have captured the repressed manners of the time and place without making the actual film stiff or distancing. The issues of race, wealth, and power, are not always handled subtly, but they treated with intelligence and care. Some moments are overwrought thanks to Rachel Portman's lush, overwhelming score, but the film's noble intentions ultimately shine through. 

A great deal of this comes down to newcomer Mbatha-Raw. In a sea of faces one expects to see in this sort of period drama, the biracial British actress is absolutely captivating, and not simply because of her "otherness" when placed among her cast mates. She has the right mix of poise and passion, to immediately grab and hold your attention. Though other characters (namely Gadon's Elizabeth) have their own legitimate struggles, Dido's are magnified and complicated by both her race and her illegitimacy. In one of the film's most powerful scenes, drawn from Asante's own experiences, Dido sits in front of a mirror and claws at her own skin, wishing she could simply disappear. Mbatha-Raw's radiant performance is captivating because it captures the essence of a typical Austen-heroine, while also infusing it with darker realities.

The rest of the cast fares quite well, especially Gadon as Dido's unofficial sister and Wilkinson as her uncle trapped between the status quo and deeply buried progressive notions. Mbatha-Raw's interactions with these two are among the film's best acted scenes. Gadon's Elizabeth, despite fitting the mould of a English rose, is without her own inheritance, thus making her less valuable as a potential match. In Elizabeth, we see a parallel as to how the treatment of women as property mirrored (though not nearly to the same degrading degree) the treatment of slaves. Things only get more complex when Dido becomes engaged while Elizabeth struggles to make any progress. 

While scenes with Elizabeth show Dido interacting with things as they are, her time with Wilkinson is smartly used to build the story's more groundbreaking arc. Lord Mansfield, the highest ranking judge in England, has been asked to review a case of a slave ship that threw slaves overboard, claiming that there wasn't enough water to keep them all healthy. As such, the ship owners want payment from the insurers for the human cargo they "lost." The issue of the value of a human life, black or white, is what raises the narrative above the ordinary. 

Asante's ability to balance the two sides of the story so well make Belle a lush, historically aware work. Neither side is shortchanged, and each is given the appropriate weight. In handling both halves so well, Dido's transformation is even stronger than it would have been if the focus had been primarily on one or the other. For all of the heaving bosoms, colorful gowns, and melodramatic outbursts, Belle is unique as period pieces go. In making the film feel like a straightforward period piece, despite its issues of race, Asante has turned the genre on its head. Belle doesn't need to be blatantly 'edgy' to stand out, because its simple toying with expectations accomplishes volumes more. 

Grade: B

Review: "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"

Just about everyone in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a light comedy-drama from John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) may be in retirement, but to label the film an "old person's movie" would be a huge disservice. Boasting a fine assembly of some of Britain's finest actors, Madden's latest film does, unfortunately, set itself up for nothing more than cliches. But this is mostly in the results, meaning that even though Marigold trips up in some of its conclusions, the journey is still very much worth taking. 


The film opens with a series of efficient introductions to its cast of characters, all of them British retirees who, in one way or another, find themselves sent to India as part of the next (and likely final) stage of their retirement. The characters range from Evelyn, a housewife who recently lost her husband (Judi Dench) to recently-retired judge Graham (Tom Wilkinson). Meanwhile, the group of seven stay at the titular (and severely misrepresented) Marigold Hotel under the watch of Sonny (Dev Patel), the young, idealistic manager. The film as a whole is generally light on plot from that point forward, although that usually works in its favor. 


Madden and screenwriter Ol Parker allow the characters and the audience to get a sense of the beauty and chaos that is India, without ever falling into the trap of becoming an accidental National Geographic special. And even though it runs just over two hours, Marigold never feels like it overstays its welcome. Certain characters and subplots are sometimes left alone for too long (particularly Sonny's relationship with his girlfriend), but once they come up again, the film executes them well. Madden and his tremendously gifted cast create a wonderful atmosphere, tinged with the right mix of comedy and drama, that the proceedings only begin to feel slight in one of the film's most critical sequences near the end, where nearly everything is resolved too neatly for its own good. 


So much of what makes the film enjoyable to watch is how it uses the Indian setting (as well as the clash of cultures) to inform the character study across the ensemble. Among the film's best segments are those revolving around Wilkinson, whose character is the only one of the group to have been to India before. That the character is returning to India (where he actually grew up) marks a nice contrast to the other stories. He is going to live out his last days back where it all started, whereas everyone else is going further from home than they've ever been. These are the sorts of narratives that don't seem to require the most concrete resolutions, except that the script insists on them anyway, completely throwing off Madden's lovely vision of India as a land that assaults all of one's senses at once. The film's final sequence rectifies this to a degree, ending on a note that feels more in line with more open, character-based style, but the big scene, which resolves three or four problems all in rapid-fire succession, comes off as a weak attempt to ramp up the dramatic tension in the story, and it feels wholly unnecessary. Yes, elements in Marigold are cliched, but they don't feel cliched thanks to the execution, that is until the above-mentioned scene comes along and calls direct attention to it. 


Thankfully, even the film's weakest moments are elevated by the stellar ensemble. In fact, the benefit of having a cast that isn't young at all is that everyone is a pro at this, and one never gets the sense that any of them are trying too hard (though it's a shame that Downton Abbey co-stars Penelope Wilton and Maggie Smith never have a chance to engage in any verbal smack downs). This isn't to say that the cast puts in the bare minimum of effort, merely that there's a level of comfortability so that one never has to worry about one odd member of the group throwing the balance of the ensemble off due to less experience. The behind-the-scenes team isn't too shabby either. Thomas Newman's score captures the scenes nicely without becoming overbearing or getting in the way of the actors. More impressive is Ben Davis' cinematography, which captures the wild range of texture and color that India has to offer in any number of sumptuously photographed scenes. Newman and Davis' work stands out just the right amount, never calling too much attention to itself, while still smoothing out some of the bumps in the screenplay through their contributions to the film's atmosphere. 


So despite the cliches that ultimately mar the resolution, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has so much going for it that it's hard to knock it down too much. This is a measured, though still heartfelt film about aging and new beginnings that, despite its older cast, has something in it for a wide range of ages. It's also a reminder that Mr. Madden, while having never topped the success of Shakespeare in Love over a decade ago, remains a sensitive and effective film maker whose work is still worth following. 


Grade: B

Review: "The Debt"

Originally set for release in 2010, John Madden's The Debt, an English language version of Israeli film Ha-Hov, has had its release date moved more than once. Such delays are usually not a good sign, especially when the move is from fall to the end of August, usually considered a dumping ground for projects that studios want to die quietly. However, Madden's film actually belongs in the company of The Road and this spring's The Adjustment Bureau, in that it's a very solid film with generally effective direction and performances.

Opening in the late 60s, before quickly jumping to 1997, The Debt traces lives of three Mossad agents tasked with tracking down Dieter Vogel, who earned the nickname the Surgeon of Birkenau during World War II for his sadistic experiments on prisoners. In the years since the mission, Rachel (Helen Mirren/Jessica Chastain), Stephan (Tom Wilkinson/Marton Csokas), and David (Ciaran Hinds/Sam Worthington) have become heroes; Rachel's daughter has even written a book detailing the lives of the trio over the course of the mission. Unbeknownst to everyone but the three, however, is a secret that may or may not be coming back to haunt the three agents.

Before I continue, I'll confess that it doesn't really take much work to figure out the most basic details of the agents' secret. Thankfully, Madden and co. play the script, adapted by Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and Peter Straughan, straight to the point where the film's effectiveness does not hinge on the twist. Instead, The Debt is more concerned with creating the right atmosphere, which it certainly does. From the shabby looking interiors in the main flashback, to the muted colors in nearly every frame, Madden and DP Ben Davis more than convincingly capture the bleak look and feel of East Berlin. There may be a certain slickness to the story telling and editing, but the film is still appropriately gritty and free of sensationalism. Even when we're shown a key scene twice, almost shot-for-shot, there's still a sense of foreboding tension. It also manages to jump between time periods without resorting to cheap amounts of summary about the past. What could have been an overly-talky, exposition-filled story is instead a very well-paced Cold War thriller that breezes through its 114 minute run time with few dips in energy.

The generally fine ensemble is but another plus. Characters are not rendered with as much depth as the script suggests (young Rachel's moments of fragility, young David's unexplained distance from others), but the actors are more than convincing with what they're given. Mirren, as always, is reliable as the tough and conflicted Rachel of the film's present, while Wilkinson and Hinds do what they can with what amounts to barely any screen time. But if the older versions of the agents aren't given as much time to make an impression, thankfully their younger selves do. Chastain, in yet another completely different role, is both graceful and tough as Rachel, while Sam Worthington gives a surprisingly solid turn as David. Csokas is good as well, although his role feels the least conflicted of the three, so he's given less to work with. The real star of the film, though, is none other than its villain, played by Jesper Christensen. As Vogel, he makes a compelling shift from deranged hostage to sly manipulator. The way he tries to wear down his captors is supremely unnerving to watch, even if he too is somewhat lacking in depth. So even though the character might at times verge on being a dark cartoon, Christensen makes it convincing to watch. The writing may never effectively bring out Rachel's occasional breakdowns, but when Chastain and Christensen interact, the film at least shows us how intimidating certain people can be, even when they're completely helpless.

It's these interactions that make me wish that The Debt had given its characters more room to become fully rounded. The material here could be nicely expanded into a longer film, or maybe even a three or four part miniseries, quite comfortably. Watching Vogel mess with the agents is one of the film's highlights, but it could have allowed for some truly masterful filmmaking and acting had it been given more room to play out. Instead, the film reduces itself to being more of a fun and gritty, albeit inconsequential, potboiler. There are issues of truth and justice raised, but the film only introduces them in key moments, never delving deeper. When Wilkinson and Mirren have an argument regarding what ought to be done, it feels much too quick considering what's at stake. And despite its generally strong execution, there are a handful of scenes that get overheated, with jarring cuts and unnecessary amounts of noise. I suppose this was Madden's way of showing the stifling nature of the agents' lives once they become trapped inside their own headquarters, but when put up against the film's less bombastic scenes designed to do the same thing, it feels out of place.

All in all, though, it's hard to deny that The Debt is ultimately a success. It tackles its subject matter appropriately, if a bit on the shallow side, and has a cast full of solid performances, even if not everyone is used to their best ability (Ciaran Hinds in particular). And, by not letting the story exist solely to build up to a twist, the film feels more watchable. There's no big surprise that would make the The Debt less compelling on a second viewing, and the story goes to a rather effective, unhurried ending once the twist is revealed. So even though it may not be the potential awards contender that some were once predicting it to be, The Debt is a nicely executed, mature thriller, even if it isn't necessarily must-see filmmaking.

Grade: B/B-