Loving (2016)

There is a moment about half way through Loving, director Jeff Nichols' retelling of the true story of the couple who changed American law for interracial couples, that shows just how much he gets. The couple is driving and they desperately, yet tentatively, reach for each other's hands, holding on for dear life. It's a small gesture, but a profound one. And it speaks volumes about its subjects and their story.

Everything I have read about the Lovings (the last name of the white man and black woman who were arrested for nothing more than being married to each other) is that they were very quiet people who weren't looking to be heroes. Nichols brings this approach to his masterfully filmed tribute to them. His film is quiet, beautiful but unassuming. It doesn't try to be a grand epic. It's not a court room drama. It's not a horror film of white power lynchings and attacks. It is a very simple, gorgeous, lyrical portrait of a couple who love each other and never waiver in that love. It is the power of that love which changes a nation.

Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton employ the same approach, giving restrained yet powerful performances. Negga moves her head lyrically, smiling a peaceful smile, exuding the strength of someone whose power comes from love. Edgerton looks like his fight is always draining him of everything he has. He just wants to love his wife and take care of his family. Never has a last name been so appropriate for so much. That is the power of this story and the power of a film which resists doing anything but letting this couple's story be told.

Other approaches would have been to follow the legal process more closely. There would have been television style drama in that for sure. Perhaps the brutality of the supremacists around them would have made for some exciting, edge of your seat thrills. None of that is in loving. All of it is peripheral. Nichols lets you feel the real fear of being different in a region where that isn't okay. That hand holding says it all.  The legal process is discussed but kept to the sides. Nichols in interested in who these people are. We are interested in seeing their love.

Because that is what wins the day. There are always arguments for hate, disguised and prettied up by those who want to maintain power. Loving doesn't allow room for that by focusing on what you can't argue with, the love of a family which doesn't alter when alteration finds. And that is the lovely, quiet triumph of Nichols' film Loving. It is everything is should be and it's glorious.

Loving
Starring: Ruth Negga, Joel Edgerton, Michael Shannon
Director: Jeff Nichols
Writer: Jeff Nichols