i can’t understand why selma hasn’t had a wider theatrical release in singapore. no, it wouldn’t have the same resonance for a non-american audience, especially when it expects you to know an awful lot of american history well (certainly i knew i was missing quite a lot — jolly glad i went to dinner with two american academics right after who could explain things, such as the problematic dynamic betweenthe sncc and sclc…and much as i hate to admit it i found myself having trouble at some points with the accents…) but it obviously isn’t the kind of film with only limited appeal that it should only be showing once a week at a small arthouse cinema. on the third weekend i went with john d, who said that as an american it is practically obligatory that he see it; i quipped i wasn’t american and was only going because he promised scenes of southern food. (this was only half in jest; naturally i wanted to see the film for all the obvious reasons but i think somewhere naively in my hollywood-ised mind i did believe that a political biopic set in the south would of course feature scenes of people arguing at the dinner table.) it was not just good; it could so easily have been ruined by melodrama or heavy-handed treatment but it was deftly, beautifully done. and it is an indicator of how light-touched the direction had been that, given the subject, and me being the kind of person who cries at even the slightest bit of kitsch at movies, i was absorbed and distressed throughout but didn’t shed a drop of tear until the very end, and only when the historical footage of the march came on. and then i cried, quite a lot, but softly, for that gentle, understated emotion that was gradually building up over the film and which only then erupted into gentle sorrow and solidarity. john says he thought it reasonably balanced, though most american reviewers found it too charitable to president johnson; was it? i’ve just been listening to christopher lee’s excellent play for radio 4 ′air force one′ and as a result am quite prepared not to like the president. i suppose the general difficulty for me was that i couldn’t tell what i didn’t know because i am not american, and what no one knew. at dinner i listened carefully to the two americans i was with, both articulate east coast academics working in the humanities, slowly figuring out what neither had known — that there’d been a second, aborted march, the name of the new york times journalist who provided the contemporary coverage of events (roy reed, i looked him up when i got home. i somehow imagined that his name would be one that is remembered today, rather like woodward and bernstein (or perhaps he is, in journalism school!) curious though, the casting decisions: that given its subject almost all the major characters were played by non-american actors. i can quite see no american actor feels happy playing governor wallace (tim roth is english) but no one wants to portray john lewis?!days later, when looking for footage of the march, i find a contemporary documentary made by stefan scharff, which is now available in its entirety on youtube courtesy of scharff’s family.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird