Selma Review

DuVernay's smartest decision is scale. Instead of a life we get three months and one campaign, chosen because Selma had a sheriff who could be relied on to supply the images the movement needed, and the film is candid that this calculation is what strategy looks like. David Oyelowo carries it with a performance built on fatigue, a man managing coalitions, wiretaps, a marriage under strain and the knowledge that he is spending other people's safety. The King estate had licensed the speeches elsewhere, so the words here are new, and they run close enough in cadence to work while quietly proving that cadence was never the whole gift.

Bradford Young photographs dark skin with a warmth and a willingness to underexpose that studio cinematography had spent decades failing at, and the bridge sequence uses slow motion and settling gas rather than the usual coverage of chaos. The film loses ground with Lyndon Johnson, flattened into an obstacle in a way the record does not support. Even so, this is the rare historical picture that respects logistics, and the closing march earns its swell without begging for it.