Selma
Directed by Ava DuVernay
In theaters December 25
Does Selma, Ava DuVernay’s new movie about Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s attempt to win federal protection for the voting rights of southern blacks in the wake of the Civil Rights Act, play it safe? No one’s biopic of a world historical figure, especially a legendary non-violent Negro assimilationist whose deification the entire doomed Republic seems to agree upon, will satisfy everyone. I cried while watching Selma, right around the time Keith Stanfield’s Jimmy Lee Johnson is murdered by a police officer while trying to defend his helpless father following a march the cops willfully and brutally ambushed.
