Selma

There can be great power in picture, or word, or song. And sometimes the three can be perfectly synchronized, with the impact of one added completely to the other, and the other. This is not always the case with films, even when a movie is treating a subject of great significance. Often the power of a story, or the depiction of a piece of history, is not magnified by a film's components much beyond what we already know. But Selma is one of the exceptions to this norm – it definitely moves the needle. The physicist would call what I describe above “constructive interference” – the synced superposition of multiple energy waves (light or water or other) to form a resultant that has greater magnitude than its parts. Selma rolled over me, the peaks of its wave much higher and valleys much lower than expected even for a re-telling of such a dramatic and pivotal period of American history.

Selma benefits, I believe, from not having to cover the whole Martin Luther King Jr. story. Instead, the film's power is packed into the three months surrounding the civil rights protest march from Selma Alabama to the State’s capital, Montgomery, in 1965. The march was organized in protest of severe discrimination in access to voting in the south. The Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination based on race and color, had been signed in 1964. Black people could legally vote in 65, but numerous racial local policies kept most from even being able to register in the south. Director Ava DuVernay and screenwriter Paul Webb show us both the front and back of this time, marching us into the raw emotions of the many protesting in the streets and the incomprehensible cruelty visited on them, but also through the nasty political juggling of the few power players in the back rooms. All are laid bare to some degree in Selma. King’s (David Oyelowo) charisma is displayed along side his flaws and weaknesses, and, most interestingly, his doubts about the outcome of his cause and even in his ability to carry it through. President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) is portrayed as more an adversary than an ally to King, coming at this issue of life-changing magnitude with the same long-term goal as King, but from a different world – as Johnson reminded King in one heated exchange, “you’re an activist and I’m a politician… you’ve got one big issue and I have a hundred and one.” Johnson knew he needed public sentiment to gather sufficient momentum before he could introduce and pass a voting rights bill and King knew that it could not wait. DuVernay’s portrayal of the impasse is impressive as is Oyelowo’s and Wilkinson’s portrayal of the two main characters in the struggle.

There are many imperial scenes in Selma – the act of terrorism that ignites the story, the impasse at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, King being confronted by his wife, Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) on past infidelities – and Oyelowo is in the best of them. He’s not on the list of best actor nominees but he probably should be. The bottom line is that you should see this film, and not just because of the importance of the subject matter. Somebody said to me before I saw Selma that I really was going to have to like the film because of what it was about. Yes, I benefited from being reminded of the events, both terrible and wonderful, of this turning point in American history, but DuVernay’s telling of it burned them into me, the actors held them hard to me so I could not forget them. 9 out of 10.

Into the Woods loses its way along the path

Even moviegoers unfamiliar with the story line from the Tony-winning stage musical will know, from the first few scenes of Into the Woods, that this new fairy tale is going to have some edge to it. “Into the woods to bring the bread, to Granny who is sick in bed,” sings Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford); “Never can tell what lies ahead, for all that I know she’s already dead.” But the promise of an irreverent tale played out by an all-star cast gets lost on the trail somehow - the telling of this twist on familiar myths not quite clever enough, the drama of it not quite moving enough, the score note quite memorable enough to push this uneven adaptation of the Stephan Soundheim (lyrics)-James Lapine (book) play beyond being just an interesting time passer. Into the Woods is fun in places, but lacks the magic and exhilaration found in the really good film musicals – even in the dark ones. 

Into the Woods’ story is a convolution of several Brothers Grimm fairy tales with five stories and their characters running concurrently through a single intersection point – the woods. Eventually all the stories’ characters enter the woods – Red Ridding Hood to visit her grandmother, Jack (Daniel Huttlestone, Les Miserables) on his way to the village to sell the cow, Cinderella (Anna Kendrick, Perfect Pitch) running home from the ball chased after by the handsome Prince (Chris Pine, Kirk from Star Trek), and Repunsel sequestered there by a Wicked Witch (Meryl Steep). The Witch starts the multiple tales in motion by sending a Baker (James Cordin) and his Wife (Emily Blunt – The Edge or Tomorrow) into the woods on a scavenger hunt of sorts with the promise that success will bring them a desired child. 

It was the above-listed grade-A cast that drew me to this film on its opening week, pulling me from Unbroken or Big Eyes or Exodus.  And all of the stars, big and small, perform well to very well – handling Sondheim’s complex wordplay lyrics with seeming ease. Streep’s screen-gobbling Evil Witch and Kendrick’s prototypical Disney vocals were no shock, but Blunt and Pine surprise with strong musical performances and the latter delivering the film’s finest comic number, “Agony”, belting out, with his brother prince, a sappy ballad about their lost or unreachable loves. But Director Rob Marshall (Chicago) can’t maintain the energy of that bright spot. The film’s pace sputters – it revs and stalls its way to the end of the first act where the tale downshifts hard into a darker state. 

The woods, we learn, is a place where you never know what you’ll find, where knowledge is gained, the good kind and the tough kind, and where interests and goals collide causing collateral damage or alliances, or both. I have not seen the theatrical production for reference, but this seems to be the message parsed out in the intertwining tales – that life is not a fairy tale and you never know what will happen. I say seems to be, because the morals of the stories, delivered through witty verse, are numerous, sometimes disparate, with multiple sub-messages. And after sifting through the unsteady tone and shape of the telling, it turns out to be a message that I, and everybody else who has lived more than a few decades, is all too familiar with. Into the Woods does not have the spark sufficient to make the message new or its musical delivery memorable for more than a few seconds. Heck, if I’m going to sit through 130 minutes of pithy message tunes telling me something I already know, I’m going to need one of them to be catchy enough to hum on the way out – but none of them stuck. 5 out of 10.