LOVING (2016)
Directed by Jeff
Nichols
Focus features, 123
minutes, PG-13
* * *
Loving is a hard
movie to review. On one hand, it focuses on the couple at the center of one of
the most important legal decisions in American history: the 1967 Supreme Court
decision Loving v. Virginia, which
overturned anti-miscegenation laws and paved the way for marriage freedom for
all, including same-sex unions. On the other hand, the film's protagonists are
so ordinary that it's hard to connect them to the legal precedent that bears
their name. Director Jeff Nichols has the problem of trying to make an audience
care about a couple with all the charisma of the backcountry Virginia dirt from
whence they sprang. He doesn't entirely succeed.
For those unfamiliar with the case, Richard Loving (1933-75)
and Mildred Jeter (1939-2008) grew up in hardscrabble Caroline County,
Virginia. Although he was white and Mildred was mixed race (Indian, black,
white), they came of age in a part of Virginia where poor whites such as the
Lovings interacted easily with people of color–a place where a shared rural
values and lack of economic opportunity often trumped race. Richard and Mildred
were childhood sweethearts even before they journeyed to the District of
Columba to marry on June 12, 1958. Mildred was, by then, heavily pregnant with
their first child. Had they stayed in Washington, you'd have never heard of
them. Instead, they returned to Virginia. In the middle of the night, the
police broke into their bedroom and arrested them for violating Virginia's 1924
Racial Integrity Act. When Richard pointed to their framed marriage
certificate, he was told, "That's no good here." The Lovings were
jailed, pleaded guilty to violating the law, and were banished from the state
for 25 years with the understanding they'd be imprisoned if they were caught
cohabiting or being together within Virginia's borders. The film follows their
exile to Washington, where they had two more children; their attempts to live
undetected in Virginia; and the circumstances that ultimately landed their case
before the SCOTUS.
The viewer's dilemma is obvious from the start: the
Lovings—aside from their racial difference–practically define the term
"ordinary." They were rudimentarily educated, soft-spoken, and
unremarkable people–he a bricklayer and she a homemaker. Their slice of
Virginia was one where folks worked on and raced cars, drank in roadhouse bars,
and picked tobacco. Director Nichols captures the vibe of a 1950s world in
which few people challenged authority, hence we watch Richard seethe at their
arrest, but not question it. Not that doing so was in character; his manner was
as slow as that of the countryside. Appreciating this film requires that you
surrender to its languid pace. Indeed, one of the more powerful points the film
makes is that the Lovings were so unexceptional that one wonders why Virginia
would want to bother two such
harmless individuals. The pacing, though, is also the film's major problem.
Richard (Joel Edgerton) is a man of so few words that the film is nearly silent
when he's on camera. Mildred (Ruth Negga) is a step up on the laconic scale,
but it's a very small skyward stride. We quickly get the idea that the
prosecutors are morally challenged. Folks such as the Lovings can only be
viewed as threats when privacy rights take a backseat to artificially
constructed (and bigoted) views of purity and propriety. That's an important
lesson, but it still leaves us with passive protagonists who come off as victims
lacking agency.
I can understand why Nichols wouldn't want to make another
courtroom saga, but the focus on the Lovings as a couple lacks the dramatic
sparks of said filmed legal battles. Nichols pushes the court case so far into
the background that the most compelling part of it is the Lovings' inability to
comprehend the legal system. It doesn't help that Nichols reduces the ACLU's
role to something more akin to a cartoon than as a champion of civil rights.
Left on the table are options that might have been more interesting on the
screen. Why, we wonder, was there so little overt racism in Caroline County
when other parts of the South are aflame? Is that accurate, or was intolerance
there simply a can of worms Nichols didn't wish to open? We don't even know how
Richard perceived race. There is a short scene in which he appears to have
never given it much thought, but it's hard to imagine that even a man as
unreflective as he could reduce race to a simple, "I love my wife"
statement. There's also a matter of the biggest liberty taken in the film, the
decision to distill the tension to black and white terms. Although biographical
details of Mildred remain scant, she emphasized her Rappahannock and Cherokee
roots and indentified as Native
American, not black. That didn't matter under Virginia law, but tinkering with
Mildred's self-identification seems more a nod to contemporary sociology than
to historical accuracy–to say nothing of being reductionist and robbing the
film of an opportunity to discuss the central fictiveness of race.
In my view, the best way to enjoy this film is to lower your
expectations and think of it more as quiet portrait of injustice rather than a
drama. Remember that the Lovings were legally married for nearly a decade and
still underwent travails. If the film makes you think more deeply about
identity, privacy, fairness, and tolerance, it will have been two hours well
spent. Just don't expect to lose your socks over visuals or dynamic
performances. That's no rap on Edgerton or Negga. Not even actors as fine as
they can make a Fiat 500 roar like a Ferrari.
Rob Weir
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