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Product Description

SELMA is the story of a movement. The film chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. Director Ava DuVernay's SELMA tells the real story of how the revered leader and visionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his brothers and sisters in the movement prompted change that forever altered history.

Review

Selma chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. Director Ava DuVernay’s Selma tells the real story of the revered leader and visionary Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his brothers and sisters in the movement that prompted change that forever altered history.

Product details

Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 1.6 ounces
Item model number ‏ : ‎ 59167202000
Director ‏ : ‎ Duvernay, Ava
Media Format ‏ : ‎ Widescreen, NTSC, Color, Multiple Formats
Run time ‏ : ‎ 2 hours and 8 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ May 5, 2015
Actors ‏ : ‎ Oyelowo, David, Winfrey, Oprah, Roth, Tim, Ejogo, Carmen, Wilkinson, Tom
Dubbed: ‏ : ‎ French
Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, Spanish, French
Studio ‏ : ‎ Paramount
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00NMF8SEK
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1

Best Sellers Rank: #60,556 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #10,803 in Drama DVDs

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A Masterful Dramatization by Ava DuVernay of Powerful History

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2023

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Not enough good things can be said about this powerful and moving portrayal of one of the most inspirational, fearless, consequential, and self-sacrificing people that our country has ever been blessed with and all those brave people who stood together with him.

If you watch this film, you will experience an excellent visual representation of the historical truth.

This masterpiece directed by Ava DuVernay demonstrates the level of respect that important history and important historical figures deserve. That respect requires an unflinching honesty, such as is demonstrated in this film.

The supporting cast is remarkable.
For example, Colman Domingo (playing Ralph Abernathy) and Oprah Winfrey are simply incredible in this film—they may not have the biggest parts, but their acting is superb here and they absolutely inhabit their roles. It’s not only that the actors perform excellently, it’s also that they have been provided with compelling dialog and dynamic roles, which is evidence of a deep commitment to historical authenticity on the part of the creative team.

A powerful dramatization of a historical story such as Selma can only be achieved, I think, from a truly authentic passion for the history involved. The creative team behind this movie clearly was inspired and fascinated with the history, and was willing and able to do the hard work of researching and understanding history so thoroughly that they were then able to dramatize accurately.

Without that genuine passion, a movie that involves challenging historical topics and events may likely end up two-dimensional, cliche, and dissatisfying. Such movies will not stand the test of time the way that Selma definitely will.

Retelling marginalized history is a tremendous challenge, as evidenced by all the movies and shows that unfortunately fall flat compared to their potential. Worse, without careful attention to historical truth, such stories may have a terrible unintended consequence—reinforcing the very stereotypes and false myths that they should be dispelling.

Selma gets it right in every single way.

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2024

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Everyone should watch!!

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Tim F. Martin

Fantastic historical drama, not just important but very well done

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2020

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Very well-done historical drama centered around the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. Though Martin Luther King Jr. is arguably the main character, the movie isn’t called King and does give a lot of screen time to other historical figures, such as Hosea Williams (played by Wendell Pierce), Coretta Scott King (played by Carmen Ejogo), John Lewis (played by Stephan James), President Lyndon B. Johnson (played by Tom Wilkinson), and Alabama governor George Wallace (played by Tim Roth), with the film showing lots of other behind the scenes events relating to the marches, scenes set in both Alabama and in Washington.

The movie is excellent and the first thing I would like to praise is the casting of MLK. Not only does David Oyelowo look like the man, even more to the point he sounds just like him, with his accent, his cadences, his presence…it felt at times like I was watching MLK, that the actor very successfully channeled his essence.

The second thing I would like to praise as that while the film shows indeed why King is such a towering figure in 20th century history, it doesn’t lionize him so much as humanize him. In addition to showing his leadership, his bravery, his sacrifices, and his really astute political instincts, it shows King as a real man, a man who had doubts, who didn’t always know exactly the right path to take, a man who like most people struggled with balancing work/home life and with his relationship, a man very aware of the public threats against him very directly impacting his family. Similarly, the film doesn’t romanticize the civil rights movement in general, showing the leaders and members as real people with real concerns, people who didn’t always agree on the right path to take, people who had a few missteps but nevertheless triumphed in the end.

Overall the film did a great job of casting the major historical figures. Several didn’t always look exactly like the people they were portraying but they again channeled their essence. After a time I accepted I was watching Governor Wallace and LBJ.

Good period piece details as far as music, clothing, cars, hairstyles, really nailing the feel of the time.

Really no complaints. I know some people have raised issues with how Johnson was portrayed (that in real life he was more supportive) and from briefly reading a few things before writing this, some think Jewish civil rights leaders were unfairly omitted. I can’t comment particularly on the latter, though I can see why from a narrative sense why Johnson was portrayed that way. The film is well done all around.

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MAX

Super Film

Reviewed in France on May 7, 2023

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Un film qu'on peut regarder et apprécier sans se faire des soucis. Contient quand même des scènes violent mais c'était la réalité malheureusement.

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J. L. Sievert

Dedication and vigilance

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 9, 2018

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The film begins with the deaths of four young girls, aged 11 to 14. Their names are Carol Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson. They were murdered at their local Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama on 15 September 1963, dressed in the their Sunday finest. They lived in a Christian country and prayed to the Christian god but were marked for destruction because their skin was dark, not white. The Jim Crow bomb that killed them on the steps of the church that morning was a symbolic message sent to the black community. It said, in effect: “Cease and desist. Give up your struggle. Things are as they are and will not change. Peace will return when you go back to being quiet and dutiful citizens.”

That was the game: democracy and rights for whites, knowing your place for blacks. Segregation was good for both sides. You have your patch, we have ours. But the dice were loaded, the game rigged and unfair and everybody knew it.

In 1863, 100 years before the girls were killed, Lincoln proclaimed the black population free during a civil war partly fought to achieve this. The Confederacy lost the war in 1865. The slaves were freed. But freed to do what? They still lived in the South. Their families and kin were there. It was what they knew, even if conditions were harsh. Many did not want to move, or had nowhere to go.

Freedom is fine in principle, but life doesn’t exist in a vacuum. An infrastructure for emancipation was needed. Re-education of the whites was necessary too, plenty of whom had learned nothing from the war. The South was defeated but not its ideas. Slavery was abolished but not the slaver mentality. The black man was now free to be neglected, to be unemployed, to live in poverty and shoddy housing. Free to sit at the back of the bus, to be excluded from hotels and restaurants, to be denied the right to vote. Free to have access to inadequate, underfunded schooling. Free to be intimidated, terrorized and lynched. Free to be unprotected by the laws and by those elected to enforce them.

How long? That was the question. How long does this evil go on? If a civil war couldn’t destroy it, what can? It had to be answered. The dynamics of the game made it inevitable. Rosa Parks was tired that day, she would later say. She had worked all day on her hands and knees. She was exhausted and wouldn’t shift herself to the back of the bus. She refused. She had reached her limit of endurance and compliance. Elsewhere blacks sat at lunch counters even when service was refused. The mood was shifting. A silent momentum was building.

Silent until a mighty voice began to be heard. He was a preacher at a Baptist church in Atlanta. He spoke from a pulpit that seemed like a mountaintop, a place close to God and all the angels. The voice boomed, the church shook with hosannas, hallelujahs, wailing. If he was their Moses, the Red Sea in Alabama ran from the town of Selma to the courthouse in Montgomery. He would lead his people to salvation there. He would give them the courage to defy hatred and bigotry. They would do it non-violently. They would symbolize civility in a place of brutality and barbarity. It would not be easy. There would be violence, injuries, maybe even death for some. But it had to be done. They had to make a stand and march. The time had come. The voice was heard. The question of how long had to be answered. This was their answer. History would begin in May 1965.

This film is about that march and how it happened. It’s about the eloquent Baptist preacher awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964, and of others around him in the civil rights movement, including his wife Coretta and their family. He was the first President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a position he held from 1957 until his murder in 1968. He’s the man whose birthday (January 15) is now a national holiday in the U.S., a man named after the leader of the Reformation in Germany in 1517. He is of course America’s Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., a man in my opinion who is greater than the country that produced him.

Key people in the movement surrounding Dr. King (and shown in the film) are Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Amelia Boynton, Diane Nash, John Lewis, James Orange, et al. Then there are others beyond his immediate circle, including the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, whose songs comfort Martin when he is down. One poignant scene in particular is deeply moving. It’s late at night and Martin can’t sleep, always so much on his mind. He calls Mahalia and asks her to sing to him over the phone. He knows his phone is bugged. He knows the FBI listens to everything he says. But he doesn’t care. She will sing to them too. The power of her voice may even teach them something significant and humane. She sings like an angel of course, and on the wings of that voice he is temporarily transported to Heaven.

Annie Lee Cooper is another strong woman in the story. She is played by Oprah Winfrey, who was instrumental as an executive producer in getting the film made. Annie Lee is dignified and determined. She wants to vote and tries to register in Selma, but every time she is turned down on absurd, illegal grounds (asked to recite, for example, the preamble to the U.S. Constitution or to play a game of trivial pursuit with the local clerk in naming the counties in the state of Alabama — nothing but outright intimidation in denying a U.S. citizen her constitutional right to register to vote). These hicks, these rednecks, are the problem. But they’re everywhere in Alabama and throughout the South. The governor of Alabama, George Wallace, is a proud bigot. Jim Clark, the Jim Crow sheriff of Selma, is just as bad. He’s more than bluster. He’ll swing a night stick if he has to. Man or woman, doesn’t matter. If the person is black, that person is the enemy.

Then there’s Washington, D.C., especially the egregious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson, the President by default in the wake of JFK’s murder in 1963. Johnson looks harried throughout, overwhelmed by events and people beyond his control: Vietnam, student unrest and demonstrations, the civil rights movement, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, the Black Panthers, etc., etc. He is under siege. He understands and appreciates Dr. King’s cause and supports it ethically, but will not commit politically. The Selma march is thus designed to force Johnson’s hand politically. Dr. King says only LBJ can sign federal legislation that forces voter registration in the South to be free and open. That’s the key: the vote. Without it the blacks will remain indentured to these white slavers in the South forever.

Dr. King is played by the British actor David Oyelowo whose family emigrated to Britain from Nigeria. For several years he studied the accent, speeches and speech patterns of Dr. King in the hope and off-chance that a biopic of the great man might one day be made. When audition time came, if it ever did, he would be ready. It did; he was. He embodies the Reverend King as well as any actor can be expected. A wise choice. However, Martin Luther King, Jr. was iconic, larger than life. We have seen and heard his speeches on video and know how he sounded. No actor, absolutely none, can duplicate this. Impossible.

I thought about King and James Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), while watching the film. Why this connection? Because Baldwin had been a teenage Baptist preacher in Harlem. The novel is all about that experience, the church, and his domineering father. Baldwin knew what King was like because he himself had once been like him. He was a product of the church. He knew the cadences of sermons delivered from the pulpit, its rhythms of call and response with the congregation. Black Baptist preaching wasn’t just a church service; it was a revival meeting, a gospel show, a communion with Heaven that shook the rafters of the church. Soul. Exactly that. That’s what these people had, and Baldwin writes of it well in his remarkable book. One paragraph, please. Because after reading it you will understand where Dr. King’s power, charisma and eloquence came from.

“On Sunday mornings the women all seemed patient, all the men seemed mighty. While John [the young preacher] watched, the Power struck someone, a man or woman; they cried out, a long, wordless crying, and, arms outstretched like wings, they began the Shout. Someone moved a chair a little to give them room, the rhythm paused, the singing stopped, only the pounding feet and clapping hands were heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the tambourines began again, and the voices rose again, and the music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgement. Then the church seemed to swell with the Power it held, and, like a planet rocking in space, the temple rocked with the Power of God. John watched, watched the faces, and the weightless bodies, and listened to the timeless cries. One day, so everyone said, this Power would possess him; he would sing and cry as they did now, and dance before his King.”

Yes, power and kingship. King was powerful because he had the Power. It’s so obvious when you hear him speak and watch what such speech did to others. Which is why he was dangerous, or thought to be, and made people nervous. Whites, that is. Insecure whites with much to lose, or much that was appropriated by them, stolen from black slave labour as well as from the original Americans, the true inhabitants of the land.

This is history yet it’s not, or not only that. A disproportionate share of the U.S. prison population is black (10 to 1, black to white, in some states). Unarmed young white men are not shot to death in U.S. streets by black policemen. That equation is reversed. Some black athletes now kneel (not stand) for the national anthem because they know it was written by a racist (Francis Scott Key) who damns himself in verse in the third stanza of the song, a stanza never sung in public (“No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave”). And even now in many states right-wing Republicans are doing their best to prevent persons of colour from voting via arcane, convoluted rules that are illegal but not yet struck down. So the march goes on because apartheid in America never truly goes away, the myth of race still embraced by some despite what science and the Human Genome project know and teach (to those who wish to learn).

Truly fine film, utterly relevant, then as now. Progress has been made of course, but as with everything it has to be protected and passed on with dedication and vigilance.

32 people found this helpful

Ray

Die Märsche von Selma nach Montgomery...

Reviewed in Germany on July 19, 2015

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Es gibt einige sehr gute Filme über die großen, vor allem im Süden der USA stattfindenden Rassenunruhen der 60er Jahre. Unvergessen bleibt dabei Roger Cormans bereits 1962 (also mitten des Zeitgeschehens) inszenierter "Weißer Terrror", wo gerade die Aufhebung der Rassentrennung zu schwerwiegenden Konflikten in dem Moment führt, als die schwarzen Kids in Richtung Highschool marschieren. Nicht zu vergessen den großen oscarprämierten "Mississippi Burning" von Alan Parker, der sich mit der Aufklärung des Mordes an drei Bürgerrechltern durch zwei sehr unterschiedliche FBI Männer (gespielt von Willem Dafoe und Gene Hackman) beschäftigt. Die Ermittlungen werden vom offen zur Schau getragenen Rassismus und dem mächtigen Ku-Klux-Klan behindert.

Nun kann man auch das Geschichtsdrama von Ava DuVernay aus dem Jahr 2014 zu diesen wichtigen Filmen über Rassenhass zählen. Das Thema erscheint auch aktueller denn je zu sein. Der Film ist somit auch einer der wenigen Filme, die sich anhand von tatsächlich stattfindenden Eregnissen eindrücklich mit dem Rassismus im eigenen Land auseinandersetzt - man mochte es kaum glauben: Die freiheitliche Nation, die nicht mal 20 Jahre vorher Europa vom Rassenwahn der Nazis befreite, ist Mitte der 60er Jahre diese demokratisch orientierte Nation mitten in ihrem eigenen Rassenthema und die Diskriminierung der schwarzen Bevölkerung erinnert an unser eigenes dunkles Kapitel. Dabei wurden zwar im liberaleren Washington durchaus schon durch Gesetze formuliert und verabschiedet, die gleiche Rechte für alle forderten - doch deren Verwirklichung scheiterte vor Ort.

"Selma" ist kein Biopic über den großen Bürgerrechtler Martin Luther King Jr., sondern die Handlung steigt ein mit dem grausamen Attentat auf die 16th Street Baptist Street, bei dem vier kleine dunkelhäutige Mädchen ums Leben kommen. Dann Szenenwechsel nach Stockholm, wo Martin Luther King kurze Zeit später für sein Engagement als Bürgerrechtler den Friedensnobelpreis in den Händen hält. Nächste Szene zeigt die engagierte Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey), die sich beherzt und mutig in das Wählerregister von Alabama entragen lassen will, doch vom lokalen Beamten in demütigender Weise abgelehnt wird. Dieses Recht hatte so ein Behördenmitarbeiter, die kurzentschlosssen die Lesefähigkeit und Staatsbürgerkunde mit absurd schweren Fragen überprüfen konnten - alles darauf abgezielt, den Anwärter durchfallen zu lassen.

Mit dem Anführer Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo), dessen Frau (Carmen Ejogo) immer mehr Angst hat um ihren prominenten Mann, versuchen im Frühling 1965 mutige Demonstranten einen friedlichen Marsch im Bundesstaat Alambama von Selma nach Montgomery zu laufen. Dieser Marsch soll dazu dienen, dass ein uneingeschränktes Wahlrecht für alle vorhanden sein soll. Präsident Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) schwankt - einerseits sieht er die Notwendigkeit solcher Gleichstellungen, andererseits schielt er auf das Beibehalten seiner Macht, denn die konservativen politischen Kräfte im Lande arbeiten mit sehr großem Druck. Auch George Wallace (Tim Roth), demokratischer Gouverneur von Alambama, torpediert die Bestrebungen der schwarzen Bevölkerung. Diese Märsche von Selma nach Montgomery werden blutig durch örtliche Sicherheitskräfte und State Trooper niedergeschlagen - der erste Marsch endet bereits gleich nach Verlassen der Stadt an der Edmund Pettus Bridge. Am 7. März 1965 wird das amerikanische Fernsehen unterbrochen - es läuft gerade Stanley Kramers "Judgement of Nuremberg" - und der geschockte Zuschauer bekommt live plötzlich die Bilder der Gewalt als aktuelle Nachrichten serviert. Durch diese Publicity entsteht aber eine Wendepunkt in der öffentlichen Meinung...

"Selma" ist ein sehr gut inszenierter Film, der die Fakten präzise schildert und zum wichtigen Zeitdokument wird. Dabei brilliert auch Hauptdarsteller David Oyelowo, der sich sehr zurückhält und so zum Glück nicht dieser überlebensgroße Held zeigt, sondern einen engagierten Menschen, der Stärken und Schwächen zeigt.
Bei der Oscarwahl 2015 gabs nur zwei Nominierungen, einmal für den besten Film. Als bester Filmsong konnte "Glory" von Common, John Legend sogar den Sieg davontragen.
Angesichts der erstaunlichen Tatsache, dass sich bislang kein großes Filmstudio mit irgendeinem Aspekt des Lebens von Dr. King oder der Bürgerrechtsbewegung beschäftigt hat, fühlte die junge Filmemacherin Ava DuVernay, dass es schon lange einen dringenden Bedarf daran gab, dieses wichtige Kapitel in der US-Geschichte zu erzählen. Keine Frage, es ist ihr hier ein sehr wichtiger Film gelungen.

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ML

DVD en anglais et français

Reviewed in France on June 12, 2022

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Bonjour,
J'aime regarder les dvd que j'achète en langue originale. Celui-ci ne fait pas exception. Si vous ne sautez pas les étapes des bandes annonces du début du DVD, vous trouverez bien le choix de lire votre DVD soit en français soit en anglais, avec les sous-titres en français si besoin.
Bon film!

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cristóbal robles

Ponerse en movimiento, marchar y esperar

Reviewed in Spain on March 26, 2020

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Me ha gustado el acierto en el color, en el título, Selma, una ciudad donde comenzó a "trabajarse" y a ensayarse lo soñado por M. L. King en agosto de 1963.
Me parece excelente la puesta en escena del discurso de Johnson en el senado. La bandera es un símbolo en el que se encuentra la esperanza de los ideales americanos, como logros, como razones y también como denuncia. Basta recordar las varias ocasiones en las que la bandera aparece en The Visitors. Aunque ya tardía, The missing, de Costa Gavras. Un americano no es un privilegiado, sino alguiçen que ejerce su derecho y tiene el amparo de los tribunales.
Hay una memoria que dignifica. Otra justifica el rencor y honra la violencia. Esta es manipulación.
"Selma" recuerda una esperanza, que comenzó a cumplirse casi de inmediato. En el calor de la noche Norman Jewison contó una historia. En 1967 podía afirmarse que los sueños de King comenzaban a realizarse. En la escena final el Jefe de Policía de Sparta lleva la maleta de Tibbs. Lo saluda y se despide de él,. Tibbs viaja en un coche que no discrimina.En ese plano final está escrito "Ohio", un estado abolicionista, donde, ya en la década de los sesenta del siglo XIX, acudían refugiarse los esclavos huidos de Virginia

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Genre	Drama
Format	Widescreen, NTSC, Color, Multiple Formats
Contributor	Ribisi, Giovanni, Ejogo, Carmen, Winfrey, Oprah, Roth, Tim, Toussaint, Lorraine, Wilkinson, Tom, Thompson, Tessa, Duvernay, Ava, Gooding, Cuba, Jr., Oyelowo, David, Ommon, C. See more
Language	English
Runtime	2 hours and 8 minutes