Category: Movie reviews

My Internship in Canada (Guibord s’en va-t-en guerre)

My Internship in Canada is that rarest of things: a comedy about Canadian politics. The only other I can think of CBC’s adaptation of Terry Fallis’ fine novel The Best Laid Plans, which CBC rather made a hash of.

My Internship in Canada is more successful. It tells the story of independent MP (another rare thing!) from northern Quebec, Steve Guibord, who—in a parliament where the Conservatives have a very slim majority—finds himself with the deciding vote on whether Canada should join a war effort in the middle east.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEGECiVM02I

My Internship in Canada (official trailer) – YouTube

Following all the drama with great excitement and interest is Guibord new Haitian assistant / intern, Souverain. Souverain proves of great help to Guibord, as he’s intelligent and very well-read on the subject of Canadian democracy. (His explanations to his fellow Haitians back home are also useful to any audience who might themselves not be so familiar with the intricacies of Canadian democracy.) He’s also not above sneaking around behind Guibord’s back, if it’s for the greater good.

Several women play important roles as well: his wife, who’s for the war; his daughter, who’s against it; a local reporter playing out the sometimes-tense relationship between media and politics; and the mayor of one of the main towns in his riding, who becomes increasingly (and hilariously) exasperated with Guibord’s last-minute cancellations.

Geography is also incredibly prominent. The riding is very large (“30 fois la grandeur de l’Haiti!”), and Guibord’s fear of flying make him entirely dependent on the highway system, targeted for protests by natives and truckers.

The laughs at the expense of a stuttering union spokesperson (get it?) are unfortunate, and I’m not entirely sure about the portrayal of the Haitians. Overall, though, this is a good-spirited, funny, and intelligent comedy.

In French with English subtitles.

Movie review: The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game posterI’d wanted to see this movie during its theatre run earlier this year, but never quite fit it in. But it’s now available on Netflix, and we watched it this weekend.

It tells the story of how Alan Turing managed to crack the “unbreakable” Enigma communication code the Germans used during World War II (making it a decent movie choice for Remembrance Day). Turing was brilliant, obviously, but also eccentric and very much lacking in social skills. Ttoday, he likely would have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. So his challenges in completing the mission were as much personal as technological; the rest of the team initially couldn’t stand him.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Turing. The other big star in it is Keira Knightly, as a brilliant mathematician whose gender has greatly limited her options, until the chance to work as part of Turing’s small, covert team. Both are very good.

Code-breaking is detailed and time-consuming work, but largely through the various personal conflicts, along with huge stakes in human lives, the movie tells the story in a very interesting way. Turing builds a machine to help decipher the code (and hence ultimately becomes the father of modern computing). And after the code was broken, we see why terrible calculations and deception had to continue.

Turing’s being homosexual at a time when this was illegal lends an undercurrent of sadness to the film. In the movie, he tells his wartime story after being arrested for “gross indecency”. In the end, we see the devastating effects of his “chemical castration” sentence.

But overall, though serious, the movie is not a huge downer. It has its moments of humour, and it’s a story worth knowing.

Three recommendations

In no particular order… But brought to you by the letter C.

Chef (movie)

This Jon Favreau movie (he stars and directs) is about a talented chef whose restlessness with the owner-imposed constraints of his restaurant come to a head in spectacular fashion when a prominent food critic gives him a bad review. In the aftermath, he starts a new chapter of his life—in the unlikely confines of a food truck.

This movie features three things I love: well-prepared food, travel, and Twitter! And they’re all wrapped up in a funny and endearing story, chock full of great actors in parts big and small. I didn’t buy that—even with his great cooking—Jon Favreau’s character could attract not only Sofia Vergara but Scarlett Johansson, but I’ll forgive him that, as I found everything else so wonderful.

Available on US Netflix (among other places, I’m sure)

Chef trailer

Catastrophe (TV show)

CatastropheAfter a hookup that leads to a week of wild sex, irish teacher Sharon is horrified to find that American Rob has impregnated her. So the two make an attempt at having a real relationship despite the challenges of immigration visas, unsupportive family members, dubious friends, and the health problems that can occur when a 42-year-old gets pregnant. Fortunately, they really like each other…

This is one of the funniest series I’ve seen in a long time. Often crude, but we’re all adults here, aren’t we? And it was nice that the backbone of the series was a couple who are growing in fondness for each other in the midst of considerable craziness and stress.

Also great, in the world of “peak television”, was that this series has only six episodes, and each is only about 25 minutes long! Mind, it did end on a bit of a cliffhanger. But apparently season 2 is on the way soon.

Available on Shomi (Canada), Amazon (US), and BBC4 (UK)

Cabernet Franc (wine)

Sometimes, when at a winery tasting, you get caught up in the fun and excitement—and the effects of alcohol—and you buy and bunch of bottles. But when back at home, with the daily grind, you open them… And you can’t remember what the big deal was. They’re fine, but kind of meh.

Well, that just hasn’t happened with wines we were most impressed with on our Lake Erie winery trip this summer: the Cabernet Franc. We’ve by now had one bottle of the Aleksander (2012) and one of the Cooper’s Hawk (2013) and remain rather wowed by both. Fruity, delicious, vanilla accents, maybe? But not overwhelming. “Can be eaten with food.” Thing is, I don’t remember Cabernet Franc being such a wow grape. Has it improved, have my tastes changed, were those just especially good years?

At any rate, if you’ve been dismissive of Cabernet Franc, you might want to give it another whirl.

Movie review – Mad Max: Fury Road

On paper, Mad Max: Fury Road is not my kind of movie. Little sounds less promising to me, movie-wise, than “it’s basically just one big car chase”.

Mad Max: Fury Road is, basically, just one big car chase.

But somehow, the visuals and the pacing of this thing make it work. Visually, everything looks so amazing. Like this dude:

Flame-throwing guitar player in Mad Max: Fury Road

This character has no lines, and bringing him along on this chase makes no sense. (“What, they couldn’t just play a CD?”) But man, did he look cool. (And boy, could he play guitar.)

I read in Wired that the action sequences were, as much as possible, actually filmed rather than just being CGI’d against a green screen. Apart from enhancing the visuals, I think it also heightened the sense of danger the characters were in, motivating this constant motion against their pursuers.

The story, such as it is, has Max getting kidnapped by these white-skinned people who live in a compound where bad guy Immortan Joe rules the population by controlling the water supply. The action begins when Furiosa (Charlize Theron), secretly stashes away Immortan Joe’s “wives” in her armed vehicle on a purported fuel supply run. Furiosa is reported as having gone off-route, and then the women are found missing. Immortan Joe gathers his troops (including the guitar player) to get them back. Max is taken along as unwilling blood donor.

Mad Max in Fury Road
Mad Max, living blood bag

A crash allows Max to join Furiosa’s side, despite mutual suspicion. Interestingly, despite his titular status, Max remains pretty much her sidekick through the movie.

Is this a feminist movie? You can make a case for it. The women are not just supporting the men’s story; they aren’t just victims or girlfriends. And yes, that was kind of refreshing.

Furiosa
Furiosa, hero

And the violence level? Well, nothing that especially upset my delicate sensibilities. Maybe it all went by too fast.

Now, Jean did complain that much of the movie didn’t really make sense, plot-wise. “It was kind of a bad movie, wasn’t it?”

Yet the next day we had a big old discussion about it, aided in part by this article in The Toast: Welcome to Your Steampunk Future. Sorry There’s No Water, but We Did Put Skulls on Everything. (And read the Comments on this article, too. Yes, really — it’s OK. Comments are moderated at The Toast.) And we had did come to agree that while much of what happened was a bit mystifying, that didn’t really matter. They didn’t go on and on talking about this strange world and its ways, and you didn’t have to understand all the details to follow what was happening.

So yes, it’s an illogical movie that is basically one long car chase. Nevertheless, it provides plenty of food for thought.

*** (out of 4)

Your movie may be cool, but it will never be Mad Max: Fury road guy playing a flamethrower guitar cool

Movie review: Inside Out

Armed with a gift certificate, we made our way to the unfamiliar confines of the big, glitzy Galaxy Cinema to see the well-reviewed Pixar film, Inside Out.

Turns out that the “Pre-show” for a General Admission film means a great deal of tedious talk about kid’s movies. Much as I have found Wallace and Gromit amusing in the past, that was way too much talk about Shaun the Sheep! Then we had to sit through commercials, then yet more trailers for kid’s movies, including, of course, freakin’ Shaun the Sheep!

So when the animated short that preceded Inside Out finally started, the little Lewis Black’s inside our heads were firmly in charge of the control panel.

Pixar's Anger

Inside Out largely takes place inside the mind of a young girl named Riley. Riley has great parents, friends, love of hockey, and a comfortable middle-class existence. Her various emotional states are played by five characters.To this point in her 11 years, Joy (Amy Poehler) has mostly been in the driver’s seat. But others step in when needed. Fear (Bill Hader) helps keep her safe. Anger (Lewis Black) defends her against injustice. Disgust (Mindy Kaling) prevents her from being poisoned. And Sadness (Phyllis Smith)… Well, nobody’s too sure what Sadness is for.

Insider Out characters

When Riley’s parents uproot her from Minnesota to San Francisco, however, Joy has trouble maintaining control. All the pillars of Riley’s life to this point, depicted as island’s in her mind, seem to be crumbling away—old friendships fading, family stressed, school now strange and scary, hockey no longer a refuge…

Riley’s experience of all this emotional turmoil is depicted as an interior journey. Joy tries to keep Sadness at bay, but that just leaves openings for Fear, Disgust, and finally Anger to take over.

As if often the case in Pixar movies,there’s a lot here that would go right over kids’ heads. You have to see to appreciate how they depict the inner workings of our minds, such as the management memories—core, subconscious, fading, and just… gone. And the characters’ scary trail through abstract thought (“we’ve become two-dimensional!”). And the peculiar timing and persistence of ear worms. And the even more peculiar production of dreams. And losing one;s train of thought.

To add to the fun, we also get glimpses into the mind’s of other characters. (I especially liked that every adult women seemed to have her own fantasy boyfriend in there…) And be sure to stay for the credits to see more.

Sure, Joy and Sadness’s journey back to headquarters (get it?) might have gone on a bit long, and main character Joy could be a little darn annoyingly cheery.

But overall, I didn’t care. The whole thing was on the main so delightful. And so effective in explaining the role of Sadness. Even if doing so caused Sadness to take over my mind as well, and make me wish I’d brought far more Kleenex. (At least I managed not to sob. Whole theatre was so quiet at this point in the movie! Everyone so busy trying not to sob!)

My only wish was that we could have spent more time in more minds. But at the end, mine was still filled with Joy.

Inside Out trailer

Art films, documentaries, and blockbusters; oh my! Movie roundup

Recommended art film: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Me and Earl and The Dying Girl movie poster

Greg is the “me” of the title. He’s in his last year of high school, trying his best to pass through it anonymously, and uncertain about going to college. Earl is the friend he calls his “co-worker” because they spend a lot of time making short movies based on rewording original title movies (My Dinner with Andre the Giant, A Sockwork Orange, 2:48 Cowboy, and so on). And the dying girl, Rachel, who has stage 4 leukemia, disrupts his tidy life.

Greg narrates this film, pointing out that if it were a “normal” teen movie he and Rachel would fall in love. Instead, they just develop a close (but doomed, he reminds us) friendship.

Though sad in parts, this is not an emotionally manipulative tear jerker. It’s very original, often funny, and definitely a treat for movie buffs.

Other art films worth noting

I'll See You in My DreamsWarning that I’ll See You in My Dreams is not the “great date movie” it’s billed as. In the film, lead character Carol, played by Blythe Danner, reacts to a loss by suddenly reaching out to others, exploring a new friendship (yes, just friendship) with the pool boy and a possible romance with a new man in town. She also opens up more to her daughter. Not everything works out as she might hope, but she retains this new found willingness to open up to the possibilities. It’s kind of inspiring, but not really a date movie.

The F Word, on the other hand… Note that the F of the title stands for Friendship, which is a bit of curse word when you want more than that. This Canadian film (which had to be retitled What If in the US) stars Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan as Wallace and Chantry. The two meet at a party and really hit it off; unfortunately, Chantry has a live-in boyfriend. And he’s not even a jerk. So the agree to just be friends.

It’s perhaps not highly original how the two lurk toward possibly more-than-friendship, but it’s a pretty charming to watch. The two actors have good chemistry.

I’m not sure why I’m assuming here that people pick art movies for dates, but to keep running with it… I’m not sure The Overnight is your best bet for that, either. It is a sex comedy, but I’d say with an emphasis on the funny, not the sexy. In it, a young couple who have recently moved to Los Angeles meet another couple in the park. Their kids hit it off, and they get invited over for dinner. After the kids are in bed, things get a bit weird. A bit weirdly sexual—or maybe just sexually weird.

It’s not a bad little movie. It is funny, it’s different, and the cast is good. Just select your viewing companion carefully.

Mainstream movies

“The movies you’ve heard of”. And of which, I haven’t seen too many  lately, actually, though I have a number on the list to see. But these are older ones.

Recommended mainstream movie: Edge of Tomorrow

Live Die Repeat movie posterThis movie didn’t do very well at the box office, under its original title, Live, Die, Repeat, maybe because the public doesn’t so much like Tom Cruise anymore. But if you can stand to watch him, it is a good movie! (I saw it on TMN.)

The premise is a world at war with an alien race. Cruise plays a Major without combat experience who is dropped into a major conflict zone. Unsurprisingly, he dies. More surprisingly, he revives, finding himself back at the time where his mission began.

So it’s a kind of sci-fi Groundhog Day, except that his time to restart isn’t always just a day—even though no matter how long he survives, he always ends up back at the same starting point after he kicks it. This allows for considerable variety in the action, as he tries this path and that path, and we don’t always know on which attempt we’re coming in. It’s a pretty smart movie, and quite entertaining.

Other mainstream movies

I saw these two on a plane!

  • Into the Woods: I quite enjoyed this alternative retelling of familiar fairy tales, complete with song
  • Kingsmen: The Secret Service: A fun and funny movie about British secret agents—though points off for that unnecessary, very sexist, final scene. (Actually, for whole third act treatment of the princess character.)

Recommended documentary: Citizenfour

Citizenfour movie posterThis Oscar winner follows documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras as Edward Snowden, calling himself Citizenfour, makes contact, offering information that will be “worth her while”. Then we see on film the process of his disclosure of state secrets and its aftermath, including his being charged under the Espionage Act, losing his passport, and finally gaining safe haven in Russia. Against that backdrop, we learn more about the information he leaked by the journalists (Poitras is joined by reporters from The Guardian) who report it.

The film itself is very subtle, with much information necessarily just conveyed via white text on a black screen. But the story that is revealed is quietly fascinating. I thought I knew, basically, what the Snowden leaks revealed, but if so, I really hadn’t internalized the extent to which the NSA was basically poking into all electronic communication, and not just the metadata. Pretty alarming stuff…

Other notable documentaries

Lambert and STampLambert and Stamp focuses on The Who’s original managers, Kitt Lambert and Chris Stamp, giving a new perspective on the band’s history. Being of very different backgrounds and characters, they were unlikely partners, with no experience or contacts in the music business. Yet they nurtured what became one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

As a Who fan, I did enjoy it, but the movie would have benefited from more and tighter editing. It’s also unfortunate that the more interesting of the two managers, Kitt Lambert, died long ago. There is only so much archival footage of him.

With a number of interviews from those who have left the “church”, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief helps explain how people can become devoted to such a recently developed, expensive “religion” with such weird ideas at its core. It also shows the abuse and damage that is inflicted on many adherents, both when they are part of the “church” and often continuing after they leave it. It’s interesting and startling, and not only because so many famous people belong to this organization.

What We Do in the Shadows on Easter Weeknd

Easter weekend this year looked like a lot like Christmas: Sunday we awoke to a coating of snow. It was pretty (and gone by Monday), but not really what you expect in April.

So it seems appropriate that I served up an Easter dinner of very hardy foods: Maple-Dijon roasted root vegetables, potatoes in duck fat, and herbed lamb chops. Served with a Cabernet Sauvignon from Peller Estates.

Easter Dinner!

Everything turned out well. Not the prettiest-looking meal I’ve ever made, but still more photo-worthy than citrus cake I made for dessert. Poor thing looked so sad, starting with the fact that my two cake pans aren’t quite the same diameter, so it had an odd shape, with ominously dripping cream cheese icing. (It’s occurring to me I could have cut the larger circle to fit the smaller, but that does sound like a waste of cake.) Tasted great, though.

I had vampires on the mind somehow 🙂 so we also took in a movie at the Princess called What We Do in the Shadows. It’s set in New Zealand, and purports to be a documentary about the lives (or unlives?) of vampires. Specifically, that four vampires of varying ages who share a flat agree to be interviewed and filmed as they go about their usual activities.

My feminist self will point out that this yet another movie that over-casts men. All the leads are men; the women in it are side characters, servants or girlfriends.

With that complaint out of the way, though—this is a really funny movie! Very enjoyable. These are your classic vampires who can’t eat food, wear silver, or go out during the day. but who can fly and transform into creatures. The centuries-long age differences cause some tensions among the roommates, which are only exacerbated when they are joined by a newly sired vampire who can’t resist telling everyone that he’s “like Twilight.”

(“Keep a low profile?” he complains, when called on it. “You have a whole documentary crew following you around!”)

What We Do in the Shadows official trailer

Jean enjoyed it as well, declaring it “weird but good”.

And that was Easter this year: Snow, vampires, and lopsided cake.

Experiencing pop culture in a time of grief

When someone you love dies, blogging about pop culture, news, travel, and food drops off the priority list.

Doesn’t mean that these trivialities drop our of your life, though. Just that your relationship to them changes, at least for a time.

Music

You know, if you break my heart I’ll go
But I’ll be back again
‘Cause I told you once before good-bye
And I came back again

Music is an emotional mindfield, isn’t it? I don’t think The Beatles “I’ll Be Back” would make anyone’s list of saddest songs ever, but on a day of bad news, I couldn’t handle it. I frantically searched through my playlists for safer havens. I finally settled on “High Energy”, a gathering of uptempo rock and dance numbers, generally with pleasingly dumb lyrics. I stayed locked on that for about a week and a half, ‘til it finally seemed just too incongruous. (Then I switched to Classical.)

Adam Lambert’s excellent album Trespassing was just the sort of uptempo music I needed for a time

Food

I was interested to discover that I still got hungry, still wanted to cook, was still able to eat. Because certain forms of stress and worry make that difficult for me. But not this one, this situation with a known but sad outcome. While  I didn’t eat more, or drink more—I didn’t find comfort in that—I still enjoyed the routine of preparing and eating meals.

I certainly became a distracted cook, though. Leaving the milk out on the counter, putting the vinegar in the wrong pantry, forgetting to start the timer. Like the energy of pushing the sadness away enough to follow a recipe was not leaving enough mental space to remember anything that wasn’t written down.

Things are now improving on that front.

Movies and TV

While actually going out to a movie seemed like too much effort, watching stuff on TV was an appealing distraction. Since I don’t watch much medical stuff anyway, there wasn’t much I felt I had to avoid. Howard’s mother died on Big Bang Theory (as the actress had in real life), but it was handled with a light touch and didn’t set me off. In picking HBO movies, I decided to skip Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow for now, given its premise of the lead character dying over and over. I instead watched and quite appreciated the comedic In a World, one of the more overtly feminist movies I’ve seen in a long time. Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZHBjLFu5is

In a World trailer

News

The human interest stories—little boys lost in the snow, Oliver Sack’s terminal cancer diagnosis—were best avoided for a while, but I still found the theatre of politics a surprisingly useful distraction. Especially in Twitter form (about the length of my attention span, at times). I couldn’t truly dig up my own personal outrage at some of what was going on, but I could still appreciate and retweet other people’s. #StopC51 and all that.

Books

Cover of Being MortalSo just a few days before all this my book club had selected Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal as our next book. It’s about getting older and end of life care, and how the medical profession has been dealing with it, and how it should.

Of course, there were days I wasn’t up to reading much of anything at all, but when I did feel up to it, I did read this, I seriously doubt I would have selected this particular book if left to my own druthers, but I feel it was in some ways helpful. It’s an excellent book, anyway, and much of it was more abstract and factual, which appealed to my logical side. Stories did become more personal and touching later in the book, but that was later in this whole saga for me too and—I don’t think it made anything worse. It certainly presented a number of scenarios I’m so glad my loved one never went through.

Valentine / Family Day weekend

We originally thought of taking a day trip this long weekend—maybe do some snowshoeing—but the record cold temperatures dissuaded us from that plan. Instead we found entertainment closer to home.

Friday night we had dinner with friends at Aqua, the new seafood restaurant in the not-so-new Crowne Plaza Hotel. The service was a little iff-y—bit inattentive—but the food was pretty good. We all went with the Valentine’s special menu. The highlights were the beet soup with smoked trout, the ravioli and beef entree Jean had, and the two desserts: A chocolate mousse cake and a cookie with ice cream concoction. We all concluded we’d eat here again, amidst that special chlorinated pool ambiance. 🙂

Afterward we all attended a symphony concert. It started with a modern piece that our friend accurately described as interesting, but not that musical. Then we got Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concert no. 2 in C minor. For me, this would be the number 3 Rachmaninoff piano concerto I have heard live, and he is three for three in my books. I always enjoy them. The second movement of this one sounds so much “All By Myself” that Eric Carmen still pays royalties to Rachmininoff’s estate. (True fact!) The third movement was lively and sensual. The featured pianist was an attractive and obviously talented young woman named Natasha Paremski.

The second half of the concert featured Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, which was also good though, for me, not as good as the piano concerto.

Saturday was actual Valentine’s Day, and we don’t generally go to restaurants then. But it being a holiday, I decided to make a nicer dinner.

I tried a new (to me) Jamie Oliver recipe for slow-cooked duck pasta. We weren’t able to buy the duck until that morning, and it was frozen, so the main challenge was getting it defrosted in time for dinner that day. That required a whole lot of rinsing.

Otherwise, the recipe wasn’t tough: Just required time. The duck cooked at 350 for 2 hours, in its juices, and I had to turn it every half hour. Then in a fry pan I sauteed some pancetta, then I added various vegetables and some can tomatoes and red wine to make a pasta sauce. After the duck cooled, we removed the meat from it, and added that to the sauce. Then it was a matter of cooking rigatoni and mixing it all together, topped with Parmesan.

by Jamie Oliver. Valentine Dinner at home

Quite delish. We served it with a Chateauneuf du pape.

For dessert I made a chocolate mousse cake. No flour, just cocoa, unsweetened, and bittersweet chocolate with eggs and Cool Whip, basically. It was another new recipe (to me), and it turned out well—not too sweet, good texture.

.... or is that chocolate mousse? Too much wine with dinner .. Valentine Dinner with my one and only :)

But we weren’t done eating yet. 🙂

Sunday we braved the cold and drove to Wilk’s Bar, which is at Langdon Hall, for lunch. It isn’t a cheap place (though cheaper than the Langdon Hal dining room), but they do a nice job.

Valentine Lunch at Wilke's Bar at Langdon Hall

We had the “From the Land” sharing platter to start, along with four oysters. The oysters were amazing. The land platter was fine, but not outstanding. The highlight of that was probably the almonds!

Valentine Lunch at Wilke's Bar at Langdon Hall
Muskox stew with mushroom risotto in the background

Both of the lunch entrees were very good, though. I had the wild mushroom risotto and Jean had muskox stew. The glasses of wine were quite nice, also.

But no time (or room, really) for dessert, as we had tea dance tickets for 2:00. After a detour to the wrong location, we got to that event around 2:15. It was a fun time, and a chance to work off some of the food—especially dancing to “Jump, Jive, and Wail”! Wow, that’s a fast song. (Which is why the wailing after the jiving, I guess.)

And then, we dashed to a 4:20 showing of The Theory of Everything at the Princess. Pretty interesting movie about the relationship between Stephen Hawking and his first wife, Jane. Definitely shows the challenges of her having to cope with his increasingly serious illness. Though of course, as we know, he continued to do amazing physics work through it all.

Then we were ready to go back home and relax. Family Day was pretty quiet, and that suited us just fine. Especially as we got some news Sunday night that definitely had us thinking about family.

Movie review: Selma

***½ Selma (January 2105) David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, and Tom Wilkinson – Theatre

Selma movie poster Selma covers a period of American history I wasn’t very familiar with previously. In 1965, African Americans had won the right to vote, but often weren’t able to exercise that right in southern states due to abusive registration processes that made it virtually impossible for them to get on the voter’s lists. After winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King took this on as his next battle.

Though continuing to adhere to his belief in passive resistance, King knew that drama was needed to get attention to the cause. While continuing to be peaceful, the protestors had to also be confrontational. They had to go, in large numbers, where they weren’t wanted. This required enormous courage.

Though the threat of violence was always present, I thought director Ava DuVernay did a magnificent job of always presenting attacks as surprising and shocking when they did occur. This is not violence for or as entertainment. These aren’t “action sequences”, but moments of horror.

As today’s film goers are shocked by them, so were some TV news viewers at the time.

But the film also shows that King’s struggled with the sacrifices his followers had to make for the cause—not to mention the ever-present danger to his own family. He was a preacher, and most (all?) of the movement’s supporters were also very devout, some also clergy. So religion and faith play a prominent part in the movie—to an unusual degree for a mainstream film. It made clear, regardless of own belief, that everyone involved at that time really needed God’s support, that they needed that shared belief, to do this difficult and courageous work.

The portrayal of Lyndon Johnson in the film has been controversial. While he is not presented as a villain, he is depicted as a practical politician with much to do, who doesn’t feel he can prioritize voting rights as quickly as Martin Luther King would like. Whether that’s true to history or not, I don’t know. But it definitely makes for a nice dramatic arc when he changes his mind and brings forward the Voting Rights Act.

Afterward Jean and I discussed the question of where we might have stood had we been whites in the US South at that time rather than Canadians now. You’d like to think you’d be on the side of good, or at least not so actively evil. But who knows?

Definitely a movie worth seeing.