Let's fight about the Oscar nominations

An emotional documentary film by the director of "Hoop Dreams," quite possibly the greatest documentary feature of all time, about a man who predicted the Oscar nominations for 40 years couldn't get an Oscar nomination.

They'll have to make their own...

Neither could an actor whose performance as one of our country's greatest civil leaders sparked with electricity seemingly supplied by the ghost of the source himself.

And, 144,000 frames of images built from Legos and strung together with speed, wit and a sassy score? The Academy, it seems, was not impressed.

Those are just the most egregious omissions we're talking about as we settle in with our list of the 2015 Academy Award nominations this afternoon. And to me, personally, the omissions of "Life Itself" for Documentary Feature, David Oyelowo for his performance in "Selma," and "The Lego Movie" for Animated Feature film are the biggest WHAAAAAAAAT????s of the year.

But I'm about to upset some of you. Because for me, those are the only major crimes. And now I'm going to tell you why, with some snapshot reactions to this year's list of nominees. And you should definitely comment on this post, because if we can't talk about movies, what are we going to ever be able to talk about? Here are the things I've been thinking about:

Best Picture

There are eight nominees this year. That's the fewest in this category since 2008, which was the final year of a five-nominee category before the Academy doubled it to 10 and then decided...no, wait! It can be anywhere between five and 10 (which I call the "Dark Knight Rule"). Since that change, we've had three straight years of nine nominees.

"Girl, I thought you were gone!" Photo source: Annie Barrett

So while some of you are outraged about the absence of "Gone Girl" or "Nightcrawler" from this category, consider the possibility that one less nominee this year simply means that more people liked the same films. Given that the voting system to get into this particular race puts emphasis on first-place ballot votes, I'd say that we've ended up with a high quality slate here. In fact, I predicted these exact eight films and that there would only be eight. I had "Nightcrawler" sitting at number nine just in case, and "Gone Girl" was my #11/alternate choice.

If there's anything upsetting about this list, it's that "Foxcatcher" was good enough to be nominated for Director and Original Screenplay but not Picture. But that director nomination was a surprise, and we'll get to that. And nobody out in the real world can ever understand how a film can be nominated for Best Picture but its director is not nominated. I can understand that. Ask me about it sometime.

"Selma" is a shocker here, not because it's on this list, but because the only other place it appears is on the Original Song list. It will win that award and thus become an Oscar-winning film, but it doesn't have a chance in hell here. The other outrage seems aimed at "American Sniper," but this doesn't bother me. Every year's shortlist requires at least one blockbuster, crowd-gathering film, and among this year's boutique films and persnickety independent selections, this is it. We just don't know it yet because it opens wide this weekend. But mark my words, I'll be right.

Best Director

Lots of haterade about leaving "Selma" director Ava DuVernay off this list and thus denying us the first African-American female nominee in the category, let alone what would have been only the fifth female overall. But I didn't even have her on my final predictions list. And while the media that covers these things is pulling out its hair plugs about how white and racist and sexist the Academy is, I wonder if anyone ever considered whether or not the five nominees might not be more worthy than DuVernay is, and that her nomination might have only been because of her demographics instead of in spite of them, had she been nominated.

Hear me out.

Wes Anderson has made eight incredibly personalized, formally-composed, and consistently excellent films and has never been nominated before today. (He's been relegated to the screenplay category, Oscar purgatory where all hyphenated directors must do time before getting called up.) His nomination finally arrived for what is arguably his best film ever, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (though I might still consider "Fantastic Mr. Fox" as my favorite of his films).

Inarritu: Bringing color and diversity to the Oscar race.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is a quirky genius who designed his film to appear as one continuous tracking shot, an are-you-freaking-kidding-me? idea that he actually pulled off. And, for those of you who are concerned about diversity, he's not white: bonus.

Richard Linklater made a film that is probably one of the most structurally interesting film creations of the century so far, a movie that we'll be talking about alongside "Tree of Life." And it also happens to be deeply moving, charming, and satisfyingly "normal."

I don't know anything about Morten Tyldum other than the fact that "The Imitation Game" is his first feature in English, but of all of this year's nominees, I found his film to be the most crowd pleasing in that traditional this-is-an-Oscar-film kind of way. Is that a reason to include him over DuVernay? That's worth an argument, though I liked his work better.

And so you have that last slot, which went to Bennett Miller for "Foxcatcher." Not DuVernay, and not Clint Eastwood, who owns that slot on the DGA list. I will admit that I was surprised by this. I was expecting David Fincher to be nominated for "Gone Girl." But I have no problem that he wasn't, because the truth of the matter is that "Gone Girl" (also not nominated for Best Picture) is really nothing more than a super-solid genre film that so meticulously recreated its source novel that I still can't decide which piece I like better. As far as mainstream Hollywood fare goes, it's fantastic. But those movies don't typically get the Oscar nominations. And, as I've said before, you have to decide if DuVernay's work was genuinely better than any of these nominees. I'm not sure that it was.

The Acting Categories

I'm not going to lie...I'm steaming about the Oyelowo omission. What is "Selma" without that performance? That's the real engine of the film. I think many will attack Bradley Cooper for that switch-out, some feeling that three straight years of acting nominations is a bit generous. But he's excellent in "American Sniper." Instead, I would have replaced Steve Carell, who certainly tackles a different tone in his "Foxcatcher" performance but, when compared to Oyelowo, is nominated here a la Nicole Kidman...for his prosthetic nose.

Many wanted to see Jennifer Aniston nominated for "Cake," and while I haven't seen the film yet, I wouldn't have had a big problem with it. But from what I've heard, it's just another one of those gorgeous-star-gets-frumpy-to-be-taken-seriously roles. Is acting without makeup Oscar-worthy on its  own merits? I can make this easier by eliminating four of the nominees, all expected, and focusing on the surprise: Marion Cotillard. I haven't seen "Two Days, One Night" yet, either, but generally speaking, is Cotillard a better actress than Aniston. Um...yes. Yes, she is. She's the only past Oscar winner in the lead categories, and pretty much everything she does generates Oscar buzz, even if this is only her second nomination. Why are we still talking about this?

There was only one supporting performance surprise, and it's Laura Dern, grabbing her second nomination for "Wild." Haven't seen it. Heard it was slight...a not much there role. I was pulling for Tilda Swinton's crazy "Snowpiercer" work, but I knew better. And I also know that the last slot in this category was the only genuine toss-up in the acting categories.

Source: quickmemes.com via Google Images

I should also mention that it stood out to me that three of the Best Actress nominees are their films' sole nominations. I have a theory about female performances being the strongest thing in otherwise weak or average movies that I'll save for another time. 

P.S.: Robert Duvall is now the oldest-ever acting nominee at 84 with his seventh nomination, for "The Judge." And Lady Meryl just notched number 19. Dayum!


Other Things I Found Interesting, In No Particular Order

While I was and still am upset about the omission of "Life Itself" for Documentary Feature, the snub continues two traditions. One is the continued snubbing of director Steve James, who in a less cruel world should be on his third documentary nomination by now. The other, lest we forget, is that the Documentary Feature category is by far the most volatile and unpredictable category every year. Only the foreign film category comes close! Also, if you take a closer look, you should calm down, as the category does contain documentary royalty in the finally-nominated Rory Kennedy, a member of yes...THAT Kennedy family, for "Last Days In Vietnam," and German filmmaker Wim Wenders, whose excellent feature films are constantly ignored but who picks up his third nomination today in this category.

I did not see "Song of the Sea" on anyone's prediction list for Animated Feature, but then again, it was co-directed by Tomm Moore. Don't know the name? That sneaky bastard was nominated in this same category in 2009 for "The Secret of Kells," another animated feature than nobody had heard of or had access to seeing. Deja vu.

Aside from not having seen "Unbroken" yet, (yeah...I know, I know...), I really like the choices for Cinematography. They are all truly worthy, and I was pleasantly surprised by "Ida." We should all take note that foreign films are making headway into this category in particular lately. It seems to be the one mainstream category where non-English language films have made the most headway.

No "Force Majeure" for Foreign Language Film. Sniff. I'm going to have to put it on my top 10 of 2014 list in retaliation.

Oscar nominee. No, seriously.

The end of "The Hobbit" trilogy did not go as well as the end of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, did it?

This is Diane Warren's seventh Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. No wins. No Celine Dion to sing it, either.

And while we're on Original Song, is anyone else going to talk about the fact that STEPHANIE FROM "ALL IN THE FAMILY" wrote Adam Levine's song from "Begin Again"? Find me a better random fact than that!

 The Diversity Debate

And finally, on to more serious matters.  The big uproar today has been the lack of diversity. I've read on numerous websites that this is the first time since 1998 that no actors of color were nominated. I also read that none of the Best Picture nominees feature a female main character or focus. Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast is one of many to remind us of the shameful demographics of the Academy, which is 94 percent white and 76 percent male, with an average age of 63. These are undeniable facts, and you won't get an argument from me that all of this is sad and even shameful.

But where I part ways with many is in the way we are going about analyzing the nominations as an attack on diversity. I'm frustrated that we continue to define "diversity" as pertaining only to one's gender and skin color. Perhaps I'm being naive or picking at irrelevant details, but isn't diversity more than this? It surely is those things. And clearly for many, it is the most important of things. But diversity goes deeper than these surface traits.

For a list of nominations that is quite obviously and undeniably white, those who are barking about race alone are missing the following:

• 6 of the 20 acting nominees are not Americans. Five are from England, one from France. All white, but one's home country and ethnicity is also a characteristic of diversity, is it not?
• 2 of the 5 Best Director nominees are not American. Tyldum is from Norway and Inarritu is from Mexico, so he isn't white, either, though he is the only non-white nominee in a marquee category, and I'm not so delusional as to attempt to defend that. 
•  Cinematography nominees come from Mexico and Poland in addition to the U.K. and United States.
• Not including the Foreign Language Film category, which is obviously diverse every year by default, categories like Documentary Short Subject and Animated Short Film have a decidedly international flair.
• Perhaps the most diverse category of all this year is Animated Feature. The most "American" of the lot is "Big Hero 6," which borrows heavily from Asian culture for its fictional San Fransokyo location and its hero, Hiro. "How to Train Your Dragon 2" is American, but Scottish-flavored. "The Boxtrolls" is, at least in execution, pure British quirk. And the two surprise nominees are foreign films: "Song of the Sea" is from Ireland and "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" is from Japan, a country whose long-standing tradition of excellence in animation has inched toward the mainstream in America. 

So you see, there is diversity within the nominations, if you know where to look for it. The problem is that many in the media want to use the word to describe things that are purely visual. In other words, race. Now, please, please, please don't get me wrong. Absolutely, without a doubt, YES...racial minorities are shamefully underrepresented here. They are barely represented at all. YES, this isn't a true representation of American culture. YES, the Oscars continue to reward a white male viewpoint. Trust me, I know. Trust me, I'd like to see that change, too. And if you've noticed the conspicuous absence of any attempt on my part to defend the gender imbalance in all of this, well, that's because I a have a brain and can't defend the indefensible fact that no woman is nominated this year for directing or cinematography or writing.

What I'm taking issue with is the use of the term "diversity," which I think is a little off as it's being used here. And I'm also taking issue at critics who are aiming their hostilities squarely on Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper," simply because it's directed by a man who represents every key point of the Oscar voting demographic they are having a problem with. The film attempts to honor our military, those who defend our freedom. It illustrates (and granted, other films have done so better) the irreversible sacrifices that these men and women (okay, men in this case...) make by reminding us that they can never get their old lives back in full if they are fortunate enough to return home.  It is patently unfair to target this specific film, because it flares up yet another racial fight. It feels like an attempt to turn the Oscars into Ferguson, which is a bit of a cheap and empty shot.

It makes me sad. I feel like we're pulling further apart instead of trying to heal some of the hurt. This year, the stories told by Hollywood were focused far more on men than women. There were a solid handful of films representing minorities, but really none aside from "Selma" of the quality worthy of Oscar recognition. There's your problem. I'm not sure the Oscars can recognize what doesn't exist. Nor should they nominate Tyler Perry for Best Director for a Medea movie in an act of cinematic affirmative action. I don't think anyone wants that.

Simply put, the people who finance movies have got to do better. They need to trust that we're interested in stories about women and characters who are not white. The actors getting these nominations are perfect for their parts. The aspects of diversity you don't see here today are missing because those parts, to a large degree, didn't exist this year. The Oscar nominees are not the problem. The industry is the problem.

"Selma" deserves more than two Oscar nominations, but I never really saw it getting more than four. Maybe we should focus our energies on making sure that we all get out to the theaters this MLK Day weekend to show our support with our ticket purchases. The lack of nominations in no way diminish the fact that this is one the most powerful movies of the year. And then, we can do our Oscar history research to gain the perspective that comes with context. Wait until you see what company "Selma" is in as a barely-nominated or non-nominated masterpiece.

No 12-step program for this: the movie lover as addict

I have an addictive personality.

Most people figure this out the hard way by actually grappling with an actual addiction: to substances, to body image, to sex, to gambling. The list of things one can become addicted to is varied and long. I suppose I come as close to having an addiction to food as anything else, though I am not addicted to anything in particular and have never embraced this concept as a defined and specific addiction. It's most likely that the extent of my food addiction is my occasional desire to exercise my skill with hyperbole: "I am so addicted to these dark chocolate-covered potato chips."

So how do I know I have a temperament predisposed to addiction when I haven't really suffered from one? Easy. I watch a lot of movies, and I've learned a lot about various addictions from the movies I've seen.

There are some excellent films about addiction.  Alcoholism in particular has been covered extensively in movies like "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Leaving Las Vegas" (back when Nicholas Cage was not a punchline and actually ascended the stairs to the stage at an Oscar ceremony for the performance). Drug addiction is a popular topic in movies, often portrayed in ways that you can't un-see once you've seen them ("Requiem For a Dream" and "Trainspotting" come quickly to mind). Even sex addiction has been covered in Steve McQueen's "Shame" (a feeling I felt too strongly to be caught watching the film in the theater, so I waited for the home release). What I've learned from watching these films is that if I ever dipped my toes in some of these behaviors, I would be the kind of person who would become obsessed, fall down the rabbit hole, have difficulty stopping.

What has never occurred to me was the idea that perhaps I was addicted to movies themselves. But now I'm questioning myself about that possibility.

Patton Oswalt and Richard Roeper at NCC, Jan. 13, 2015

 

Actor/comedian Patton Oswalt recently published a book (his second) called "Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life From an Addiction to Film." Oswalt describes his book as belonging to the addiction/recovery subset of memoir genres, though admittedly without some of the high stakes associated with other addictions.

Last night, Oswalt stopped in Naperville to talk about movies and his book at a signing event for Anderson's Bookshop hosted by North Central College. The event was moderated by Chicago Sun Times film critic Richard Roeper.

As "Silver Screen Fiend" details, Oswalt went through a four-year period (1995-1999) of obsessively watching movies. At this time in his life, he had just headed to California to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian. He soon took to attending local movie theaters, and in particular, the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. He kept a log of every movie he saw (excluding those on television or cable at home) and started to understand his hobby was more serious when he began to lack any discrimination in choosing between quality films and bad ones. No genre, language or year of release was off the table.

"We tack ourselves onto something bigger than us to feel like we have more importance in the world," Oswalt said to the audience gathered for his book signing, which included me. "But really, that's just magical thinking."

Exactly how spending hours in darkened theaters watching as many as three films a day and only coming out to walk into different darkened theaters to perform his comedy act qualifies as feeling like a part of something bigger is difficult to pin down, but when I think back on films I've seen, I can definitely recall times when a well-made film has made me feel like I was tapping in to a collective humanity, a more shared experience. It just didn't occur to me that a high could be associated with that.

But Oswalt came to see his habits as a true addiction. "The thing you think is serving you, you become a slave to," Oswalt said.

In a conversation as varied and sometimes spastic as his book, Oswalt and Roeper engaged in quick-tongued banter on films ranging from the glorious to the notorious, Oswalt somehow managing to extol the virtues of "Con Air" as a "man party" in one moment, then dropping a "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" reference in the next. During a question and answer session, he addressed subjects ranging from his own television and film appearances to career in comedy, ultimately hinting that the end result of his film addiction is headed toward a new phase of his career as a director. Someday.

Me with Oswalt. We talked about "Plan 9 From Outer Space."

I'm halfway through "Silver Screen Fiend" as I'm writing this, and it's a well-written and entertaining memoir on a topic I've certainly got in me that I never considered to be source material for a book. But I like the idea of putting our obsessions to good use. That's probably why I write this blog, even if few are reading it. I'm telling myself that I'm a part of something bigger to feel like I have more importance in the world. But, as Oswalt said about the thrill of doing stand-up, it's the terror of failing that makes the work so amazing. We're not just addicted to the rush of succeeding, but the terror that none of it will work.

Clearly, addictions loom large in our lives and are emotionally all-consuming. Or at least that's how they show it in the movies. The movies that I am probably addicted to. "Hello, my name is..."

Oh, and for the record...in case you're as addicted to films as we are, Patton mentioned that his favorite noirs are as follows: "Phantom Lady," "I Wake Up Screaming," "Crime Wave," "The Prowler," and "Caged." Sadly, I've seen none of those films. But I plan to check them out. The fact is, I just can't help myself...

Misplaced criticism? Some thoughts on 'Selma'

Now that I've seen "Selma," I feel compelled to share my thoughts on the controversy swirling around its depiction of President Lyndon Johnson as a stubborn adversary to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rather than his ally. Every year during awards season, a new film based upon historical events is subjected to the now-familiar scrutiny of being picked apart for accuracy. That these criticisms always occur during Oscar campaigning certainly feels like calculated attempts to discredit the merits of these films, though in fairness, they are rarely released outside of the narrow window of the holiday season, when "serious" films are paraded before award voters.

David Oyelowo. Photo source: Paramount Pictures

Many recent films have fallen under the scrutiny of fact checking, including our last two Best Picture winners, “Argo” and “12 Years a Slave.” And as a journalist, I am certainly a big fan of fact checking. But these are movies we are talking about, and as such, I believe that much of this current controversy surrounding “Selma” is misplaced energy that is taking us further away from a few key ideas that get lost every time these debates take place. So for those of you who are interested in reading my two cents on the issue, I’ve attempted here to focus my thoughts on three things that I believe get lost in the fray whenever we debate the historical accuracy of a film. 

1. Films are art.

As someone who has studied film as an academic pursuit for 25 years or so, I have a question I ask myself whenever I walk out of a theater, and that is: How well does the film accomplish what it seems to be attempting to accomplish? In my effort to talk about a movie, much less “rank” it by using some journalistic system of stars or letters, I find this to me the most fair way to assess it. Through the process of watching movies, I attempt to discern what I think the film’s creators were trying to accomplish, and I try to measure its success by that standard. It’s not a perfect system in that I often won’t know what a director was setting out to achieve. But it’s a far better system, I think, than measuring a comedy – for example – by the number of times I laughed. And it also prevents me from having to compare, say, "Some Like It Hot" to "Schindler's List," cinematic apples and oranges.

People seem to be forgetting that film is art. It’s not journalism. It’s not academic. And therefore, like a symphony or a painting or poem, its purest aim is to connect to something in our collective humanity. Art, when done well, informs our intellect. When the source that art draws upon is history, art attempts to enlighten those moments. But the primary aim of art is to visit us on emotional level. All art contains truth where the human experience is concerned, whether or not it's "based on a true story."

In the pursuit of emotional resonance, "Selma" is wildly successful. As Dr. King, actor David Oyelowo elicits the kind of visceral response that reading "Letter From Birmingham Jail" might not from those who can't transcend the limitations of the written word, however powerful. The film's director, Ava DuVernay, successfully recreates the intensity of the moments depicted in the film more frequently than she misfires. Watching “Selma” will cause you to gasp and cry, shut your eyes and shake your head, be filled with both hope and defeat – sometimes simultaneously. Does “Selma” accomplish what it sets out to accomplish? I think for the most part, the answer to that is “yes,” based largely on my next point.

2. Films have a point of view.

There are two different kinds of art: those created by a singular voice and vision, and those requiring a community of collaborators, though even with the latter, someone has to be in charge, which is why theatrical works like plays, films and movies have directors. The director is charged with the artistic vision and enlists a team with a shared belief in that vision to help him or her bring it to bear. But whether alone or as a part of a team, fiction or nonfiction, film, as with any other kind of art, is told from a point of view.

This includes films labeled as documentary or nonfiction. Even if “Selma” had been assembled from real footage and narrated by James Earl Jones, the assembly of that footage, the writing of that narration, and the choices over what to include and what not to include would pass through the gate keeping of the director and his or her vision for what story is trying to be told.

I am particularly amazed, time and again, by those who gnash their teeth over filmed versions of books. The author of a book is an artist, and the director of a film is a different artist. Unless the sole aim of the film director is to accurately recreate the book in moving images (which, I suppose, could be the case, though I’m not sure what would be in it for the filmmaker), how much does the film director truly owe the creator of the source material?

March on Selma. Photo source: Paramount Pictures

As for “Selma,” we have a film directed by, largely produced by, and largely starring African-American artists. The film, not surprisingly, reflects a particular point of view. I am not thrown to see aspects of this version of the story of the fight to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 differ from the way I’ve read about it and learned it in the past. And like it or not, I know exactly why. I have never been taught history by an African-American teacher, and most of the accounts I’ve read in textbooks were curated and edited by white editors at white scholastic publishing houses, who have to tell the version of history that is most palatable to financially profit from the sales of their textbooks. I have never met a person who marched in Selma or Washington, who sat defiantly at a diner counter or the front of a bus. Ms. DuVernay has met such people, so I can gladly defer to her recreation of their accounts for a few hours. I have neither the right nor the reason to believe that she, as this film's director, is doing any of them an injustice through her telling of these events. The film's point of view is clear, and I knew what it was walking into it just as clearly as I'd understand what I'd be getting if the director was Spike Lee or Quentin Tarantino.

Multiple sources are quoting DuVernay as having said at a recent event: “This is what I see, this is what we see…and that should be valid.” She also said that “everyone sees history through their own lens,” which is something I agree with. And I would go on to argue that good teachers in this world fight not to teach kids a particular version of history, but to assist kids in developing “their own lens.” And that leads to my third and final point.

3. Films are being misused.

As the recent terrorist attack on the satirical French publication Charlie Hebdo reminds us, we live in a world where people judge the commentary without taking the time to study what the commentary is commenting on. Young people in particular get their news straight from “The Daily Show”and its companions. They understand what is being made fun of but, with less frequency, why.

If this laziness in global citizenship is evident anywhere else, it’s certainly visible where movies are concerned, and that has been the case for years. Letting someone post the bullet points of a Supreme Court ruling on social media is far less work than reading the ruling ourselves, and rarely arrives without having passed through the filter of the poster’s interpretation of the ruling. Those who won’t take time to listen to our president speak feel adequately informed by the clips rebroadcast hours later on the nightly news. And, perhaps worst of all, films stand as satisfactory historical documents for far too many of us.

Schools use movies in history classes, and with good reason. They certainly enliven what can be a dry academic experience for any student not inherently intrigued by the past. But there is danger in allowing any film – and yes, I’m including documentary films here – in being the document of an historical event. So, for example, the problem is not that African-American leaders in New York City are working with Paramount Pictures to offer free screenings of “Selma” to junior high students. The problem would be if “Selma” became the sole statement on the events depicted in the film. How could any film be so accurate that we could show it to our children and simply say: “And that’s the way it was?”

When I watched “Selma,” I was a bit taken aback to see a President Johnson who was far more adversarial to the cause than I had once believed him to be, but my appreciation of the film was not diminished. Isn’t it perfectly reasonable to assume that this man was torn between his personal convictions and his political mandates? And before you vilify DuVernay, it’s worth taking a step back to notice that she does depict a president interested in the cause of civil rights – just one who disagrees about which steps should be taken and in which order to accomplish the goals that, on many levels, Johnson shared with King.  The film depicts the accurate end results but causes us to question the road leading up to them. I have no problem with that because I'm not relying on this movie or any one source as my sole provider of truth. I simply finished the film remembering the struggle anew, not taking for granted - at least in these moments - the sacrifices made by many to get our nation to where it is today.

I remember an uproar after walking out of Disney’s 1995 feature “Pocahontas” regarding the romanticizing of the girl’s relationship with Captain John Smith, when in reality she was known to have been much younger and was allegedly raped by Smith. It was right around that time that I started to come into a clearer understanding that while film has the power to illuminate aspects of our historical past, it is not a medium created without artistic diversions. You can call those diversions irresponsible and argue that filmmakers have a duty to get their facts straight exactly because so many of us will assume that directors have pursued their due diligence to the source material. But I think the problem is more our fault than theirs. That pursuit of the facts is incumbent on us. The filmmakers are creating art from their own personal perspectives. We’re the ones treating art as fact or complaining when it doesn’t rise to that standard. It seems to me that when we replace our historical documents, eye witnesses and carefully researched texts with movies, we're getting the history we deserve.

We need movies like “Selma” to keep the emotions of moments in our collective history alive for younger generations. And indeed, those in support of Dr. King’s mission are not going to gain any major enlightenment from the film or be so challenged by it as to question what they once believed. By and large, “Selma” is an experience in catharsis with the intellectual sidecar of a warning: are we really there yet? The film does exactly what you think it will do and largely covers exactly what you expect it to cover. I doubt many mature viewers will learn too much that they didn't already know, which in no way diminishes the power of reliving it though our viewing of the film.

Director Ava DuVernay. Photo source: Paramount Pictures

This returns us to the purpose of the art, and I think for Ava DuVernay, the purpose of her art was to remind us: of a struggle, of a feeling, and of a promise so shakily fulfilled in our country that in the closing credits’ song, “Glory,” John Legend and Common drop in references to Ferguson, Missouri without having to work hard to connect those dots.

Let us not forget that films are art; they are entertainment. I personally happen to have a greater appreciation for art that makes me think, moves me and challenges me. Others prefer that their art takes them away from their problems instead of amplifying or exploring them. But when a movie is "based on a true story," we can't forget the definition of the word "based." We are misusing films, repurposing materials that support our understanding of history as the history itself.

In his discussion on this controversy, film critic Brad Brevet, on his site Rope of Silicon, sums up my own feelings about this whole issue probably better than I managed to over the course of this long posting,when he wrote:  “The fact of the matter is, this is a movie called ‘Selma,’ not ‘LBJ,’ and if people are interested in the whole truth of history there are plenty of ways to find it. Movies evoke feelings and anyone who goes to them searching for the whole truth (even documentaries and perhaps especially documentaries) are looking in the wrong place.”