The film, Selma, points to injustice in local government, human cruelty and violence, and the redemptive power of a non-violent movement for which many people were willing to sacrifice livelihood, life and limb, all within the context of 1965 marches that Dr. King led in Selma, Alabama. It provides moving, well-acted depictions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (David Oyelowo) and Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo), acknowledging problems in the marriage but confirming the importance of family in their values and mission. It deftly navigates the tensions between Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and with Malcolm X.

It is hard to know whom to credit for the strengths, as well as the faults, of the script. Director Ava DuVernay took over the project after it was tackled and abandoned by more than a few others, and did revise the screenplay, which film critics describe as “credited to Paul Webb.” According to “The Wrap,” DuVernay’s hand is felt mightily in the final script, though Webb’s contract allowed him to keep sole credit. Also, DuVernay probably molded King’s rhetoric in this movie, since the family estate did not allow her to use any of the copyrighted material.

In interviews DuVernay has shared that she did a lot to build up the women characters and to emphasize Dr. King’s “radical theory” or “tactical strategy” of using “non-violence to provoke violence to amplify racism and oppression, to put your body on line knowing that you’re going to be violated to do that in order to pursue freedom of life and livelihood.”

In the film she did a good job of demonstrating that King took great pains to protect, as much as possible, the lives of the protestors. She focuses on King’s logic that without the removal of unfair, even absurd, restrictions on voting, the law of the land could not have been followed and African Americans would have had no voice in selecting leaders to guard the entire nation against cruel laws that violated the spirit of the Constitution.

In interviews, DuVernay has defended the film’s depiction of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) as adversarial to King’s efforts and as blinded by Johnson’s “war on poverty,” a cornerstone of his presidency, to the importance of voter rights, King’s chief objective. Leading historians, as well as members of Johnson’s staff, have insisted that the president known for his fine civil rights record has been unjustly maligned. DuVernay counters that her film was not about Johnson but about King and about African American resistance. But why minimize Johnson’s help?

The film also minimizes the help and influence of certain Jewish leaders and thinkers in King’s struggle at Selma, and before and after. There is no mention of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), pictured beside King at Selma, though the film focuses on an unnamed Orthodox Christian cleric and, most understandably, on a Boston minister, James Reeb, who was beaten to death by local segregationists.

A man wearing a black scull cap is shown in the middle and at the end of the film, and at one point kneels down (?) with the rest of the clergy. Dr. King was invited to many synagogues, however, and throughout his writings, especially in the classic, stirring moving “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he referred to the Holocaust and to the teachings of Jewish philosophers like Martin Buber. He thanked Southern Jewish columnist Harry Golden for supporting the cause. At the National Conference on Religion and Race in January 1963, Heschel observed: “What begins as inequality of some inevitably ends as inequality of all. (The Insecurity of Freedom, p. 87)

True, the film has Dr. King speak from the outset about the importance of raising white consciousness. But Dr. King gave whites far more of a role in civil rights than this film suggests. In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written in August 1963, addressed to “my Christian and Jewish brothers,” Dr. King decried those who would “paternalistically…set the timetable for another man’s freedom,” and cried out for the immediate engagement of whites in the cause of civil rights on the grounds that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

In one of the most moving and memorable scenes (penned by DuVernay or by Webb?), Dr. King says, “I am not different from anyone else. I want to live long and happy. I’m not focusing on what I want today. I’m focusing on what God wants.” This line is true to King’s spiritual vision, inspired by the biblical exodus and the biblical teaching that God is the source of human dignity, liberty and equality. Also, Dr. King’s movement, in addition to being non-violent (owing some of its methods and philosophy to Ghandi, as DuVernay -- or Webb? -- points out in the movie), was at its foundation monotheistic and ecumenical. Dr. King welcomed -- better, demanded -- help from Jews and Christians. His message was that civil rights are not for the benefit of blacks alone, but for all Americans. As Dr. King put it: “The Negro must convince the white man that he seeks justice for both himself and the white man.” (Strength to Love, p. 113)

Why, then, would the filmmakers underplay the help of whites, of a president and of Jewish leaders, when Dr. King spent much of his time speaking at churches and synagogues in order to muster such help?

Perhaps the answer to this question rests in a single line of the film’s dialogue. One of the characters tells Malcolm X, as if ushering him toward the spiritual underpinnings of the protest marches, “We are descendants of mighty people who gave civilization to the world. They are in our bloodstream….” That line reminded me of a talk I saw on YouTube by the minister of a leading African American church in New York City. He said, “[W]e believe in the power of the ancestors, those spirits that are out there that continue to encourage us, and one spoke to Dr. King and told him power concedes nothing without a demand.” Yet in the same speech, this same minister, while referring to Lyndon Johnson as “a bigoted president from Texas,” did give Johnson due respect: “Who would have thought that Lyndon Baines Johnson from Texas would become the civil rights president? Never have guessed it in a million years. But God works in mysterious ways.”

It would seem that this pastor is torn between crediting the ancestors for the contributions of Dr. King and of African Americans, and crediting God for moving President Johnson’s heart and the hearts of a nation. Is the movie, Selma, similarly torn?

Selma reminded me, as well, of the film, Beloved (1998), based on Toni Morrison’s novel. The overall message of Beloved was not a tribute to the slaves or a warning about human cruelty or prejudice.  These worthy points and others are made strongly and unequivocally, but there is an even more powerful message that pervaded and, I dare say, possessed that film. 

 Beloved the Film is very definitely some kind of call to embrace the New Age notion of “guiding spirits,” that one’s ancestors along with the “enlightened” souls of today make the best progressive spiritual teachers.  That film found hope in a young woman, Denver, who represented a new generation of African Americans, historically wronged though morally resolute. Denver was able to escape the horror of slavery and to venture forth courageously, and at the right time (not prematurely and carelessly like her brothers) because she chose the guidance of her grandmother’s spirit over the manipulations of the troubled spirit, Beloved.  The message here was that souls that never found their peace in life are inappropriate spirit guides, while the souls of those who espoused the right concepts while alive make useful guides. But it all came down to spirit guides -- the same kind of New Age doctrine popularized years ago by Shirley MacLaine in her book (1986) and TV movie (1987), Out on a Limb.

 Such emphasis on “guiding spirits” makes me thankful for the biblical warnings against seeking moral direction by consulting “familiar spirits.” (Levit. 20:6) Oprah Winfrey, who has spoken about “ancestors” and spirituality, was involved in the production of both Beloved and Selma, though my sense is that the tension between biblical teachings and ancestor-spirit beliefs is problematic nowadays in American spirituality in general.

 True, an emphasis on the moral and spiritual strength of ancestors will resonate with those who know the Hebrew Bible. Moses asks God to recall the piety of the patriarchs when Israel deserves punishment (Exodus 32:13;Deut. 9:27) This gave rise to an age-old doctrine in Judaism, zechut avot, “the merit of the ancestors”: that later generations can fall back on the devotion, dedication and piety of those who came before, invoking that merit along with sincere repentance in their quest for Divine forgiveness and help. By the time of the prophets, the matriarchs were included in the formula. (See Isaiah 51:2  and Jeremiah 31:15)

 Dr. King drew upon such good biblically-based doctrine when he spoke of the strength of black generations who came before. In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he observed, “Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation -- and yet out of a boundless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop.”  Note that when he mentions the “foreparents” (an ahead-of-the-time way to include foremothers as well as forefathers), he does not speak of guiding spirits, but refers to a moral and spiritual power in everyday life that built not only black families under adversity, but the families of the so-called “masters.” He invoked the merit of the ancestors, as well as the Divine will: “If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.”

The references to ancestors in Selma is more ambiguous. From the pulpit, this movie’s Dr. King says, “Those who have gone before us say, ‘No more, no more.’”

Could the assault on LBJ in Selma and the omission of Rabbi Heschel have something to do with ambivalences about the Hebrew Bible as the source of Dr. King’s inspiration, reflecting popular New Age beliefs in guiding ancestral spirits?