Selma, Lord, Selma

The director's first film Killer of Sheep was amazing. This film I don't know where I stand exactly. It seems to be a bit overly sentimental. I suspect you don't get that much freedom working for Disney and sometimes the more "you're supposed to feel this way" moments actually got pushed so far that they took on a bit of irony and maybe recovered some of their honesty. Maybe their flamboyance was the alienation technique to make you step back and think about what's going on. The music was what drew my attention to this idea. The first time you meet the racist cop the music is kind of silly to a point of seeming self aware. And the really unsubtle and unnatural way Burnett constantly works the word "freedom" into the film. Maybe I'm excusing bad film-making. I don't know.

It wasn't horrible. There was some style. It seemed like a lot of text though, nothing really with any kind of new life. I don't know how I feel about the characters either. I felt like the characters kind of floated through the narrative in a way that didn't let you really get to know them or understand their story. And I kind of hated the white minister, he just came off bossy rather than a person conductive to change (I would have been thinking some one more like Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men rather than the priest in On The Waterfront (who I also hate :)) maybe that's not who he was but I doubt very much the never-do-wrong guy that made it to the screen wasn't exactly a historical figure either. And were there no poor, African people that maybe took exception to being told to risk their livelihood for civil rights by the moral edict of a caucasian preacher? It seems like maybe there was some missing tension. But maybe that's how it was.

But anyway, a mediocre film by Burnett is still a pretty good film in some ways.

I like how he represented Dr. King. Maybe it wasn't warts and all, but right from the beginning he was a human being. There was no image of worship or him being on a higher plane. He was a man with a struggle and that was more or less it (as much as I suspect the other cooks spoiling the soup would allow).

And it was also a very effecting movie. I'm not a nationalistic person but the image of African people marching for their civil rights holding American flags was very beautiful.

It wasn't a failure but maybe it could have been better, especially considering the director involved.