Movie Review: 'Loving'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Audiences may stop short of loving Loving because it's so restrained, so humble, almost passive.
But look for them to like it. A lot.
It's eminently embraceable precisely because its restraint and humility are such a big part of its admirable, idiosyncratic charm.
Loving is a quietly powerful civil rights biodrama, the true story of Richard and Mildred (Jeter) Loving, played by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga, an interracial couple – she's black and he's white – who marry in 1958 in Virginia.
It is for that very reason that the authorities kick down their door and lock them up in the local jailhouse. They are then sentenced to prison because their marriage violates the state's anti-miscegenation laws.
To avoid being jailed, they and their two (of what would eventually be three) young children flee Virginia -- which may be for lovers, but wasn't then for the Lovings – and leave their extended families behind, then secretly sneak back into the state to visit.
Which is why about a decade later they become the plaintiffs in the 1967 Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, in which they sue the state of Virginia in a series of proceedings leading to the Supreme Court's unanimous decision, which holds that laws prohibiting interracial marriage are unconstitutional and thus invalidate state laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
The marriage-equality drama traces the Lovings' courtship and marriage, their exile to Washington, D.C., and their heroic dignity and grace in the face of adversity.
Writer-director Jeff Nichols (Midnight Special, Take Shelter, Mud, Shotgun Stories) knows that he has a compelling story on his hands and he seems to bend over backwards to avoid melodramatic flourishes and narrative embellishments.
Instead, he concentrates on the small moments and familiar rituals to convey the essence of his characters and their environment.
But perhaps the result of that admittedly artistically justifiable approach – keeping the movie itself reticent because the focal characters are -- mutes the drama more than it needs to and keeps us at more of a distance from the characters and their plight than we want or need to be.
That is, perhaps there is a bit too much politeness and not quite enough outrage.
That said, this is nonetheless an absorbing and persuasive historical drama.
The Lovings themselves were not people who craved the spotlight or presented themselves as trailblazers. They just wanted to live their life. Which is why Nichols treats them as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances who, without making a big, self-aggrandizing deal out of it, refuse to knuckle under to injustice.
He's aided by two subtle, minimalist performances that specialize in quietude.
Edgerton, an Aussie, shows us the distaste laconic bricklayer Richard has for anything even approaching grandstanding with the slump of a shoulder, while Negga, of Irish and Ethiopian descent, conveys all that she needs to, from agony to elation, with the slightest alteration of her wonderfully expressive face in a turn that just might garner her an Oscar nomination.
What Nichols might have given us was a bit more of the Lovings' loving relationship. Not that we don't buy their deep emotional connection and not that the chemistry between Negga and Edgerton is lacking, but a bit more emphasis on their passion for each other might have deepened our response to their intolerable situation.
So we'll sue 3 stars out of 4. An eloquent reminder of how recently we all won the right to marry regardless of race, Loving may be understated, but it's anything but underwhelming.
