The importance of the film Selma Review by Laura Albert

This is funny, I was invited to see a screening of WILD, so I'm

sitting there with my friend and a guy a few rows down explains to

girls he's with how the film we are about to see is based on a

Broadway musical. I laugh loudly hearing this, thinking, man, is he

pulling their leg in a pretty silly way. Chick hiking alone in the

forest with dancing singing trees — sure… So then the film starts

and suddenly there is the Magic Kingdom Castle… I get confused & I

am having Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom flashback — but there is the

whole Disney opening deal and I know there are no previews at these

screenings… next thing I know a very Sweeney Todd Little Red Riding

Hood is on screen… AHHH… Wild, Woods, easy mistake. MISTAKE! I

have signed up to see INTO THE WOODS! Ok, chill, I'll go with this.

(Not gonna go into a full on review, but stayin' on the Wild / Wood

mix up.) OK, so in this flick there is Meryl Streep tearin' it up with

her daughter Rapunzel to whom she sings the song, "Stay with Me": “The

world is dark and wild. / Stay a child while you can be a child.”

 

 

OK, so in the film I thought I was seeing, WILD, there is a daughter

leaving the world to go into the woods, into the wild to get over a

mother who left her too soon. Instead I saw a film where a mother

keeps her daughter locked in the woods because it’s too wild in the

world and she is not ready for her daughter to leave her. In the end

both mothers are dead. Both daughters get over it.

So what is the happy medium? SELMA.

Well, that’s what I see tonight. About how in the woods we still are,

how lost… even still…. how we are still in the wild. Like we are

motherless…

http://www.selmamovie.com/

I am accustomed to hearing people go thud in video games' highly

realistic sound effects. Also used to kids laughing as they make it

happen again and again and again — “Watch as the skater dude has an

epic fail!” — avatar's head smashes the rail and bounces, landing

with a canteloupe splat. It’s hard to watch but worse to hear.

The film SELMA, about MLK’s galvanizing march for Voting legislation,

forces everyone to connect that dull-thud sound effect to actual

suffering, to genuine struggle — and it is a deathmatch. The

sound-effect artists have perfected violence, but here they have

resonance. The people who endure those thuds do sometimes get up, but

more often don't. We have to feel the wreckage, the loss. The

mourning.

And what it is all for.

There can be no remove. Director Ava DuVernay created exactly what is

needed, a sharp reconnection of legend that has become so vague — it

seems as real as if it is a video game. The beauty of the film is the

reward, a narrative justice. Of people not asking permission, but

saying NOW. The Vote. And to connect those sounds of violence to a

people who endured that suffering for what they knew was their right

— and how we can honor them by voting. By demanding our right to

VOTE, everyone’s right to VOTE. Have no doubt, this is the film of the

year. It is the way in — to bear witness is the only way things

change.

And SELMA allows us to see and feel and HEAR. It’s not preachy, you

leave the film feeling uplifted. MLK is not a holiday or a sale — and

our work is not done. Take a kid to see it! Take someone that claims

voting is useless….

am accustomed to hearing people go thud in video games' highly

realistic sound effects. Also used to kids laughing as they make it

happen again and again and again — “Watch as the skater dude has an

epic fail!” — avatar's head smashes the rail and bounces, landing

with a canteloupe splat. It’s hard to watch but worse to hear.

The film SELMA, about MLK’s galvanizing march for Voting legislation,

forces everyone to connect that dull-thud sound effect to actual

suffering, to genuine struggle — and it is a deathmatch. The

sound-effect artists have perfected violence, but here they have

resonance. The people who endure those thuds do sometimes get up, but

more often don't. We have to feel the wreckage, the loss. The

mourning.

And what it is all for.

There can be no remove. Director Ava DuVernay created exactly what is

needed, a sharp reconnection of legend that has become so vague — it

seems as real as if it is a video game. The beauty of the film is the

reward, a narrative justice. Of people not asking permission, but

saying NOW. The Vote. And to connect those sounds of violence to a

people who endured that suffering for what they knew was their right

— and how we can honor them by voting. By demanding our right to

VOTE, everyone’s right to VOTE. Have no doubt, this is the film of the

year. It is the way in — to bear witness is the only way things

change.

And SELMA allows us to see and feel and HEAR. It’s not preachy, you

leave the film feeling uplifted. MLK is not a holiday or a sale — and

our work is not done. Take a kid to see it! Take someone that claims

voting is useless….

Laura Albert

Laura Albert won international acclaim with her fiction.
Writing as JT LeRoy, she is the author of the best-selling
novels Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things,
and the novella Harold’s End, published by Last Gasp with
illustrations by Cherry Hood.

She contributes to print and online publications
internationally, in a career that includes articles
for The New York Times, The London Times, Spin, Film
Comment, Filmmaker, Interview, I-D, and Vogue. She was
a contributing editor to Black Book, I-D, SOMA, and 7×7
magazines and is currently an editor for Lemon Magazine,
Conde Nast Glass magazine, Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View
On Fashion (www.asvof.com), and the Outpost section of
www.psychoPEDIA.com.

She wrote the original script for Gus Van Sant’s Elephant,

winner of the 2003 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival,
and was Associate Producer. For Asia Argento’s film
adaptation of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Laura served as Associate Producer. She also co-scripted Jean-Claude Schlim’s film House of Boys, was a writer for the HBO seriesDeadwood, and wrote the short films Radiance for Drew Lightfoot and ContentMode and Dreams of Levitation for Sharif Hamza and Nowness.

http://lauraalbert.org/

Ava DuVernay

Laura Albert

JT LeRoy

Into the Woods

Wild

Voting Rights

MLK

Ava DuVernay

 

mm
Diane Pernet

A LEGENDARY FIGURE IN FASHION and a pioneer of blogging, Diane is a respected journalist, critic, curator and talent-hunter based in Paris. During her prolific career, she designed her own successful brand in New York, costume designer, photographer, and filmmaker.

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