Critical Mass

Late Selma screenings for voters partly explains Oscar snub

Left to right: David Oyelowo (as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) discusses a scene with Director/Executive Producer Ava DuVernay on the set of SELMA, from Paramount Pictures, PathÈ, and Harpo Films.
SEL-13980
Left to right: David Oyelowo (as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) discusses a scene with Director/Executive Producer Ava DuVernay on the set of SELMA, from Paramount Pictures, PathÈ, and Harpo Films. SEL-13980

I finally saw Ava DuVernay's Selma this past weekend. Part of me is glad that I did not see it earlier in my capacity as a movie critic. For a movie critic would be compelled to point out that although it is a very good movie and exactly the sort of good movie that generally wins awards, it is not a genuinely great piece of cinematic art.

A movie critic might point out problems with the pacing or note that some have objected to its portrayal of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. A movie critic may have a problem with the film's musical cues or wonder if the push-button blender that appears in Coretta Scott King's kitchen is period-correct or slightly anachronistic.

I'm glad we had freelancer Piers Marchant's excellent review to run in our MovieStyle section the week the film opened. It put Selma in its proper context; it was thoughtful and respectful yet refrained from hyperbole. Having seen DuVernay's film, I concur with my colleague -- but I had the benefit of his review and dozens of other critiques before I ventured into the theater. I was prepared for Selma in a way I wouldn't have been if I had seen it when I originally expected to -- a few weeks before Christmas, when a publicist approached me about interviewing Tim Roth, who plays Alabama Gov. George Wallace in the film.

Because it is not our job to do publicity for major Hollywood motion pictures, I explained I wouldn't consider interviewing Roth until after I had screened the film. That's our policy; we don't write about movies we haven't had the opportunity to see and review. (There are plenty of entertainment writers who will do these sort of interviews; it's really not that different from when a celebrity turns up on a talk show to plug his latest undertaking.)

But the publicists I typically deal with understand; this one indicated that a screening shouldn't be much of a problem. But, she asked, might it be possible for the piece to run on the Sunday before the movie opened rather than the Friday after? (Selma opened on Christmas Day.) I told her that while normally such features run in our MovieStyle section, given that Selma was likely to attract the attention of a lot of people who don't necessarily follow the movies, that could probably be arranged; after all, I write this column every Sunday and I have a degree of latitude concerning its subject matter.

There's nothing unusual about these sorts of negotiations. It is the movie publicist's job to promote a client's work. A studio is under no obligation to submit a film to critical scrutiny before it's released, and studios don't have to make talent available for the press. I, on the other hand, need to produce columns and reviews. While my preference is to talk to behind-the-camera filmmakers rather than movie stars (because movie stars are charming and highly skilled at staying on message and are unlikely to say anything surprising or terrifically interesting), I told the publicist that I would rather talk to DuVernay. I do know a little bit about George Wallace and I figured that since Roth is British and a reliably interesting actor, it might be worthwhile to explore his take on the character. So I told her if the studio would screen the film, I would do the interview and my piece would run in advance of the film's opening.

I never heard back. I was neither surprised nor upset that Selma wasn't screened for me. I didn't think about it at all.

...

But a funny thing happened when, in my capacity as an officer for the Southeastern Film Critics Association, I helped tally votes for our year-end poll. It became obvious that a lot of our members hadn't had the opportunity to see Selma. Those who did seemed to be very high on the film. Not enough voters named the film on their ballots for it to make the aggregate Top 10, but it won our Gene Wyatt Award, given to the film that best "represents the Spirit of the South," in a landslide.

This was neither unprecedented nor all that difficult to understand -- only a handful of movies received votes for the Wyatt award, while nearly 100 found their way onto members' Top 10 ballots. Some members declined to vote for the Wyatt award (the bylaws don't require that we award it every year) and members only had the option of choosing a first, second and third choice in the Wyatt voting. Lots of the members who voted for Selma elected not to name runners-up.

Still, in the post-balloting discussion, a somewhat alarming fact became clear. Paramount, the studio that distributed Selma, had elected to hold only one pre-release screening for critics in Atlanta. This screening was on a weekday midmorning, which means that most critics -- the ones who hold day jobs -- had difficulty making it. There was also one pre-release screening in Miami. Anecdotally, I've heard of a couple of screenings that were held for church groups, and some critics may have attended those. But it's clear that -- at least in the South -- Selma didn't get the sort of pre-release promotion one might expect for a major studio's Christmas Day release. While it's not surprising that the film wasn't screened in Little Rock, it is surprising that so few critics in the South had the chance to see the movie before it was released.

It has also been widely reported that members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- Oscar voters -- didn't receive DVD screeners of Selma until after the film had opened and a lot of ballots had been cast. In theory, perhaps that shouldn't make much difference -- most Oscar voters could have attended a free screening of the film or, failing that, bought a ticket to see it before casting their ballot. But the truth is "For Your Consideration" DVDs play a role in determining which movies win which awards. How big a role is debatable, but the late arrival of the Selma screeners didn't help its cause with Oscar voters.

So while a lot of observers are scratching their heads wondering why the movie was snubbed by Oscar voters -- Selma received just two nominations, for Best Picture and Best Song -- I see the Best Picture nomination as kind of an upset.

"As someone who once spent a great deal of time reporting on the ins and outs of the Oscars, I know that the snub is not some overt racial conspiracy at work," David Carr wrote in The New York Times last week. "Among other problems, Paramount thought that Interstellar would be its big Oscar horse for the year and jumped on Selma as the better bet only when awards season heated up."

While the average Oscar voter is 63 years old and white (about 93 percent) and male (73 percent), Selma's predicament cannot be attributed to simple Hollywood cluelessness. I wouldn't be surprised if some Academy members voted for Selma without having seen the film. It is the sort of movie that flatters its supporters. It would seem to have particular resonance after the killings of unarmed Michael Brown and Eric Gardner by police last year.

This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that plays a central role in the movie. Voting for Selma would seem to be a feel-good proposition for a lot of Academy members and that's probably why it got its Best Picture nomination. You can attribute it to liberal guilt if you want, but it's hard to imagine that a certain wishfulness didn't play a part.

It's relatively easy to vote for a movie based on its reputation; it's perhaps harder to vote for a performance. If more voters had seen David Oyelowo's portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr., he would have been nominated for Best Actor. DuVernay may well have been nominated for Best Director.

But to do that, voters would have had to have seen it.

I hope most of them will.

...

None of this is to suggest Selma doesn't deserve its nomination. It isn't a well-meaning but heavy-handed history lesson like Lee Daniels' The Butler and it certainly isn't the sort of "black film" that needs to be graded on a curve. It needn't be considered in the context of its presumed constituencies like a Tyler Perry movie or received like a Kevin Hart crossover bid; Selma needn't be ghettoized as a "black movie" (whatever you think that is these days).

Selma is in many ways remarkable, one of the best conventional Hollywood movies to ever engage the seemingly intractable American problem of racial injustice.

It really is the sort of movie they ought to show in high schools. It is stirring and heartbreaking. And it is close enough to true. If you are old enough to remember the events depicted, it will likely feel right to you.

Yet we should remember that movies are movies, no matter how uncommonly affecting they are. What is best about DuVernay's Selma is that it mostly finds human beings in the details, rather than saints and rascals. Oyelowo's King is susceptible to vanity and petulance, yet able to rise to nobility. It allows for a wide spectrum of human motivation and capacity.

While the virulent racists are no more complex than Imperial Stormtroopers or inglorious Nazis, one can make the argument that that's exactly what hate and fear can do to a person: reduce them to an instrument of violent reflex.

Movies are not the best conveyances of history -- they necessarily condense and simplify. Even a film like Selma gives us plenty of opportunity to align ourselves with the good guys, the protagonists with whom we necessarily identify. It's hard to imagine anyone who watches the film considering themselves to be part of the hooting mob, much less as one of the truncheon-bearing order-followers cracking the heads of the valiants on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. But the truth is there are always more Good Germans than Dietrich Bonhoeffers and as many Bull Connors as Martin Luther King Jrs.

As a white Southerner, I can imagine my relatives on both side of the divide, among the marchers and the haters, but I cannot imagine myself as on the wrong side of history.

For I finally have seen the movie.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

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Style on 01/25/2015

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