A HISTORY LESSON AND A LOVE STORY
Loving unfolds in an elegant sequence of exquisite moments, to strong effect
There is so much going on in Loving.
At its most basic level, Loving is less of a courtroom drama and more of a love story. In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were quietly married in the District of Columbia, before being charged by the state of Virginia based on laws that prohibited interracial marriage. They avoided prison by pleading guilty, and were forced to leave the state for 25 years, a lifechanging verdict that tore Mildred apart from her tight-knit family.
It took the Lovings’ legal team nearly a decade to take the case to the Supreme Court. Director Jeff Nichols expertly demonstrates the skepticism of Richard — Joel Edgerton as the white husband — as a direct contrast to Ruth Negga’s Mildred, who was resilient, determined and unceasingly optimistic.
An entire review could be written exquisite features of this film: the way it lingers on a distraught face or a family tableau, how it communicates so much emotion through shared body language, tone and few words. I could write profusely about one shot in particular that focuses on the unenthusiastic Mildred, who feels at home only in the bucolic countryside, as she contemplates the rotting grass on a city street, where she’s been forced to move. This could be about the way your heart will double-beat when Richard looks squarely at the camera and candidly informs his lawyer Bernie Cohen (Nick Kroll), to “tell the court I love my wife.”
It’s all too difficult to separate the content of this film from current events. From the policeshooting deaths of unarmed black men to the demographic makeup of voters who boosted Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, movies about minorities have become more critical than ever before. This is certainly true of Loving, because, as much as it might feel like a history lesson of a time comfortably in our past, its poignant relevancy makes it much more than a book collecting dust on our shelves.
Movies that feature people of colour in the role of protagonist, and which sympathetically portray an experience that is ultimately empathetic, remind us to have hope, to love people who are different from us and to fight for them. Movies like Loving, Moonlight and 13th, to name a few recent examples, can inspire us to do more than merely pat ourselves on the back for watching socially progressive films or sharing #WOKE content on social media.
Loving is the type of film that prompts us to undertake difficult conversations about tolerance. It’s a movie so powerfully told, it has the potential to act as a gateway to greater acceptance and tolerance.