The Loving Story

Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred (Ruth Negga) fall in love and want to get married when Mildred finds out she's pregnant. It's 1958 in Carolin County, Virginia and interracial marriages are illegal. They drive to Washington, D.C. to get married where it is legal and return to Virginia. The state does not recognize the marriage and they are arrested. The Lovings story and their legal case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court and becomes a landmark case in marriage laws.

This is a movie everyone should see, it's a reminder to us all how different and difficult life was for a large part of the population or for those who did not follow societal laws.

The lengths to which some people will go to avoid living in DC, huh? All joking aside, though, this is a great documentary. I like how director Nancy Buirski is able to strike a balance between giving a legal treatise and telling a personal story, without one overpowering the other. Through her fine work various heroes emerge, both legal...the two dogged ACLU attorneys and Earl Warren being the biggest examples...and personal...the title characters, of course, two ordinary folks with an extraordinary amount of determination not to let the state of Virginia push them around because of their race. And there are villains, like the racist sheriff who rousts the Lovings at four in the morning and arrests them for the heinous crime of marriage and the even more racist local judge who invokes scripture in his legal opinion to invalidate their union. However, this is a tale of justice prevailing, albeit slowly (sound familiar to all you Trump Delay fans out there?), and Buirski wisely and properly, in my opinion, does not let the bad guys upstage the Lovings or their advocates. Give it an A.

I just saw "The Loving Story" this afternoon at the Traverse City Film Festival. The film is moving and inspirational, illustrating that sometimes even poor and minimally educated people can obtain justice within our court system. The story is straightforward and the ending is known, but the still photos and interview footage (some just recently discovered) of Richard and Mildred Loving shows a very genuine and touching relationship between them and their 3 children. Their quiet dignity in the face of racist laws and attitudes is inspirational. The ACLU once again is shown to be a force for justice to which people without money or power can turn.

We were not lucky enough to have the Loving's daughter Peggy present (as was the case for aegriffin at Tribeca) but the director and writers Nancy Buirski and Susie Ruth Powell were here for a Q&A. Their story of how this documentary came to be is entertaining and emotional. The idea that this film should have been used (as suggested by another reviewer) as an "opportunity to investigate the legal process" leaves me puzzled. Unless one is an attorney, the film presents as much about the legal process as one would reasonably want to know. It is not a legal treatise, but rather a story of a couple in love who would not back down from what is right, and an affirmation that the US legal system can (in time) bring about a just outcome on some occasions.

Everyone I saw it with gave this documentary their highest rating. You will not regret the time spent viewing this heart-warming slice of civil rights history. Kudos to Ms. Buirski & Powell.

And Ms. Buirski did mention that the documentary will be shown on HBO in February 2012. I certainly plan to watch it again at that time. 9/10

The Loving Story (2011)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Richard and Mildred Loving were simple folks from Virginia who found themselves in jail and forced to move out of the state. All of this was due to him being a white man and her being a black woman, which at the time was against the law. This documentary covers this period in their life as well as the Supreme Court ruling, which would change history.

This story was turned into a motion picture in 2016 and while that film was quite good, this documentary is certainly the better of the two. What makes this one here so interesting is that we get interviews with some of the police that arrested the Loving's as well as interviews with the lawyers who took their case to the Supreme Court. We also get interviews with the Loving family, which were recorded as all of this was actually going on.

If you're interested in the subject then there's no question that you'll be entertained by this documentary. The filmmakers did a very good job at explaining what the laws were at the time as well as the entire process of getting the case to the Supreme Court. The interviews with the original lawyers was certainly a major plus as were the archival interviews with the Loving family.

A classic example of an excellent document (the story of a persecuted mixed-race married couple in the 50s that went all the way to the US Supreme Court and finally changed the laws) in a not so excellent documentary. While the story and the characters are very compelling, the documentary seems to drag out for some periods and it looks more like an easy made for TV documentary than a true artistic reflexion.