Paramount Pictures
With percussive echoes of Public Enemy’s “Say It Like It Really Is” filling the background, the trailer for Ava DuVernay’s Selma offers a potent history lesson and a booming figure in David Oyelowo’s Martin Luther King, Jr.
His presence is powerfully immediate, embodying the preacher’s bombast as well as the quiet tones of tense moments. This is impressive work, and it should resonate a million fold after the year we’ve just had.
It’s hitting theaters January 9th, but (no surprise) it’s getting an Oscar-qualifying run around Christmas time. This trailer is a hammer to the forehead, and while it’s easy to call this a breakout year for Oyelowo (from A Most Violent Year to Interstellar to now playing one of the most famous figures of American contemporary history), I also hope this film launches DuVernay into the bigger spotlight she deserves.
Gird your loins, and check this out.