My first thoughts on Jeff Nichols' "Loving"


"Loving" is a very delicate film about racial injustice in the 1950s. Now, just stop there, ponder how rare that is for a studio film. It's not grandiose nor does shove any melodrama in your face. The camera is still and watches as an interracial couple struggles to maintain composure and show restraint as authorities continuously try to break their union up. Most filmmakers would have shot the whole thing as one show-stopping scene after another with much dramatic fireworks and a hammering of the message. It is not the case here. Jeff Nichols' "Loving" is so subtle and restrained that you do fear many Oscar voters might not appreciate it as they should. We have been force-fed to like flashy, ultimately cinematic ways of telling a true story, but that's never how they always happen in real life. Some of the time history is made in the most mundane and dull of situations. Spielberg's "Lincoln" knew that and Jeff Nichols' "Loving" knows that as well.