Review: Selma

Every winter since we started dating, Jamie and I have a bit of a tradition. Neither of us can recollect making this an intentional tradition, but the pattern emerged, and we can both trace it back to winter 2008. Winter is our moving watching season, but not just any movies, we end up watching really serious historical/biographical films that give us an opportunity to think about justice and the perseverance of the human spirit. This winter has been no exception.

One of the movies we watched this winter was Selma, a movie that tells the story of the planning and events that led to the march 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama on March 7, 1965. As I started writing this post, I just had the realization that today marks 50 years since that march. The march itself led to President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights act of 1965, and was a massive milestone in the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

I won’t go into the details of the film, but I do recommend you go watch it. I recommend it for a couple of reasons. First, it is a great film. Beyond being a great film, it carries the viewer back 50 years to a very different United States, and portrays just how overwhelming the opposition was to equal voting rights in parts of this country, and also carries the viewer to see how that opposition was overcome. Movies like Selma are a reminder that as Dr. King said many times, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” May we all remember that the path toward a better world may not be an easy one, but it is always worthwhile to labor for the betterment of others.