"Loving", love in marriage.
Director: Jeff Nichols
Script: Jeff Nichols
Year: 2016
Country: United States
Text - Jairo D. Velásquez
Against injustice, sow peace with love, especially if it is in marriage. A simple and to the point message that raises and maintains until the end this wonderful film. Loving is the latest film by Jeff Nichols (Mud), who tries to find a different way to explain the struggle for civil rights in the United States. It is far from the crudeness of Selma or Malcom X, it does not have the humor of Crossed Stories, nor the historical ambition of The Butler. It is a story that concentrates its strength in the simplicity and depth of the relationship of its two main characters. A gem.
The story takes us to the late 1950s. It begins unpretentiously with a conversation between Mildred (Ruth Negga), a mild-tempered African-American woman of unshakable convictions, and Richard (Joel Edgerton), a simple man whose only illusion is to make his beloved happy.
It seems like an ordinary love story. The changes come when the other space-time coordinate is added. These two wonderful characters fall in love, get married and live in the state of Virginia, USA. And that's the problem: there, at the time the film is set, it was illegal for two people of different races to marry; and if they had children, the authorities had no problem considering them bastards.
After the peace of the first meeting, the road is full of thorns. The spouses will overcome them with a single truth: the only thing that matters is to be together. With this maxim, they will build their family, overcome exile, endure the stress of persecution, confront the system and try to overcome it.
Not to say that everything is perfect, the story presents problems in its time jumps: there are events in the lives of the characters that remain unexplained. And there are characters that disappear without explanation. I still don't understand, for example, the importance given to the cars in the story. However, despite these minor shortcomings, the film that is set to get attention this awards season. It is sure to be a headliner at the next Oscars.
In an era of invasive and dictatorial cultural agendas, Loving has a clear intention. In the midst of celebrating the life and work of Martin Luther King and bidding farewell to the presidency of Barack Obama, it makes it clear that in the face of injustice and discrimination the answer is always in love. A piece that cannot be missing in your film library.
