A top quality biopic,with fantastic acting and great camerawork. Despite sounding simple, it is actually something rather special.
Selma recently caused much controversy due to it's lack of presence at the Academy Awards. There as been much back and forth as to what aspects were truly deserving of accolade and what the lack of Selma means for this years awards ceremony. So here is my opinion; Selma was horribly snubbed by the consistently short-sighted Academy and David Oyelowo definitely deserved a nomination for best actor.
Moving on from the discussions about how incompetent the Academy is, Selma is a fantastic film. I have no idea what happened in 2014, but American cinema shone brighter than it has in so many years. Selma joins the ranks of several other amazing films I have already covered this year and offers one of the best biopics in recent memory. David Oyelowo's portrayal of Dr. King is flawless. He delivers the speeches with the same transfixing weight and with pitch perfect inflections. There are points in the film where we hear speeches from King being delivered without any visual cues, and I could not actually tell whether it was archive footage or not. I don't want to know, because that fact stands as a testament to a fantastic performance. I now consider this to be the definitive portrayal of Martin Luther King and desperately hope that the lack of Oscar nomination doesn't prevent Oyelowo from having a great career in the future.
Aside from Oyelowo, pretty much every performance in the film is of an exceptionally high quality. There is not a single weak link amongst them. Tom Wilkinson deserves special praise for giving one of the years best supporting performances, his one-on-one exchanges with Oyelowo are some of the most gripping scenes I have seen all year. Oprah Winfrey delivers a surprisingly understated performance, in a role which works due to her ability to convey pain and emotion, rather than because she is Oprah Winfrey, There is little else to say other than I can not recollect a bad moment in this film from a sheer acting standpoint, and that everybody who worked on this film to deliver these performances should feel proud.
The film's cinematography is great. Ava Duvernay clearly has a very refined and complete grasp of cinematic language, which she perfectly exemplifies here. The period is lushly recreated, however the framing does not force this aspect down the audiences throat. The lighting is excellent, some of the best I have seen from a 2014 film, and it perfectly reflects the current mood of the narrative and the characters. Camerawork like this perfectly exemplifies why The Theory of Everything failed to leave a huge impact on me. The camera existed to merely show the performances, or at best slightly enhance them. Here, it combines with the acting to create magic. With a great performance you ave the making of a great play, or a top-notch soap opera. Mix in some beautifully framed and equally well-crafted visual storytelling, and that is when a film is born.
Overall, Selma probably won't stick with in the same way as Birdman or Whiplash, because it has some distracting flaws. Occasionally grating soft-piano during some conversations work to cheapen the sincerity of the film, and dampen an otherwise strong soundtrack. Also, the portrayal of some of Alabama's white citizens was perhaps a little too cartoony. Despite this however.
Despite these minor distractions however, Selma stands as one of the best films of it's type. Biopics have grown as stale as any other existing genre of film, and sadly may only get worse in the coming years. However, Selma stands here to prove that a films based on a historical account can still be powerful and evocative in ti's own right. I love it, and hope you are able to see it too.
By Jack D. Phillips
A Zoom Film Review
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