Why the Oscars Chose ‘Sniper’ Over ‘Selma’
One is a film about a soldier with 160 confirmed kills. Driven by a steady lead performance from Bradley Cooper, it boasts a strong—but not extraordinary—73 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
The other is a film about one of the country’s most important men. The film, which has also served as director Ava DuVernay’s introduction to mainstream audiences, has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 98 percent, making it one of the year’s best-reviewed motion pictures.
Both have given critics and cultural commentators pause over their faithfulness to the truth.
But while American Sniper, the film about a Navy SEAL who served four tours of duty in the Iraq War, emerged from its critical inquisition with six Oscar nominations, Selma, a look at three tumultuous months in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., received only two.
Selma follows the life of
Dr. King, played by David Oyelowo, during his time protesting in Selma, Alabama. It received an Oscar nomination for best picture (though DuVernay was left out of best director nods). It has also received a great deal of critical backlash about historical inaccuracies, real or perceived, that the film contains. TheNew York Times’s Maureen Dowd wrote about what she called “artful falsehoods’’; President Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic affairs assistant Joseph Califano took the movie to task over its representation of his boss; The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, who has been criticized more than once for his writing about race, called the film “a lie that tarnishes Johnson’s legacy to exalt King’s’’; and the Jewish Daily Forward’s Leida Snow chided its “glaring omissions’’ of Jewish allies.
Selma’s director has been forced to defend her work—on television, no less.
Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood, follows the exploits of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, played by Bradley Cooper. And while it, too, has faced its share of criticism for either historical inaccuracies or the heroic way in which a man who claims to have killed more than 250 people was portrayed, the outcry has done negligible damage to its award season chances, and Eastwood has spent a comparatively small amount of time at bat for the merits of his latest work.
The difference in the reception of Kyle’s story and MLK’s may be due to a “basic discomfort in America to consider Martin Luther King as someone who had an agenda that ran counter to the federal government,’’ according to John Baick, a professor of history at Western New England University. He also notes that Sniper has “struck a chord with audiences that wants it to be true, for it offers a history that is both patriotic and human.’’
Americans may recognize—and even debate—the details of historical dramas. We often nitpick small details of films based on true events. But we’ve rarely been bothered to trifle with the facts of these stories with the fervor devoted to Selma.
And, based on audience response, America in 2015 seems to have decided that the exploits of a man made famous for his sanctioned killings is the subject of a story somehow equally endearing and patriotic as the story of a man who used nonviolent resistance to demand that America practice what it preached in the lives of millions of its own citizens. Based on nomination tallies, all the critics who matter sided with Sniper.
Lincoln got off easy
Few presidents enjoy continued praise given to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, released in late 2012, follows the 16th president from January 1865 to his assassination on April 12th of the same year. Lincoln and his advisors set about drumming up support for the Thirteenth Amendment, fearing its post-bellum chances. Upon ratification, Lincoln sets about discussing plans for black enfranchisement before he meets his end.
In a letter submitted to The New York Times, Columbia University history professor Eric Foner stated that the film’s premise is based on a falsehood, grossly exaggerating “the possibility that by January 1865 the war might have ended with slavery still intact’’ since a number of states, he pointed out, had abolished slavery on their own. Kate Masur was one to note the passivity of black characters in the film, stating that “Mr. Spielberg took liberties with the historical record,’’ as his goal was “more to entertain and inspire than to educate.’’ And Harold Holzer, a Lincoln scholar, wrote that there were “no shortage of small historical bloopers in the movie’’ in a piece for The Daily Beast.
But the outcry over the inaccuracies in Lincoln’s depictions of its particular slice of the former president’s life was dwarfed by the praise heaped upon it. In 2013, the film was nominated for a dozen Oscars, including one for its director, Steven Spielberg. Star Daniel Day-Lewis won best actor.
Stephanie Dunn, writer and film professor at Morehouse College, said that “all historical dramas welcome some controversy and debate over the accuracy of their representations of historical figures and the facts.’’ On the subject of Lincoln, she is quick to note that “the film contained not one bit of the role of Frederick Douglass,’’ the former slave-turned-abolitionist whose relationship with Lincoln is well known to historians. And while the Washington Post’s The Root (which presents news from “an African-American perspective’’) pointed out this omission at the time, Cohen never saw fit to mention it in any of his Post columns.
Baick seems to think that the film’s ability to weather these innacuracies had something to do with the film’s director.
“Much of Lincoln was pure fiction,’’ Baick said, adding that he was also aware of how difficult it would be to call on a man with Spielberg’s “fame, power, artistic credibility, and massive public relations machine to defend his work,’’ which, despite its inaccuracies, “served to introduce Lincoln to a new generation.’’
Selma tackles the former president and King’s time in Selma in much the same way Lincoln covered Lincoln’s time in 1865. In its 127 minutes, Dunn remarks that “whether or not it can be argued to be an accurate representation of LBJ, it is a true representation of the United States’s government’s attitude and demeanor towards the fiery chaos of racial politics.’’ Historical record bears out that both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations—like LBJ’s character in DuVernay’s film—were at best reluctant to deal with issues of racism and equality for black citizens. “LBJ in the film was no different, in that while he certainly worked with King, he was not fiercely advocating for the cause in the same manner King was,’’ Dunn said.
Sniper misses the mark
The Iraq war, which toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein and installed a new Iraqi government, began for—along with another reason—the expressed purpose of freeing Iraq from its dictator. At its start, in 2003, Donald Rumsfeld told George Stephanopolous that American citizens needed to know the war was “going to end, and it’s going to end with the Iraqi people liberated, and that regime will be gone.’’
In Kyle’s biography—upon which much of Sniper is based—his stay in Iraq is discussed at length, as are his feelings toward Iraqis. For his part, he made it clear that Rumsfeld’s declaration was completely lost on him. Kyle “never once fought for the Iraqis,’’ admitting that he “could give a flying fuck about them.’’
And beyond the accuracy of the film, audiences and critics caught up in the fervor surrounding it seem reluctant to weigh the merits of lionizing Kyle in the face of his role in the invasion and occupation of a sovereign country.
“There are some real problems in the film,’’ Baick said. Kyle, whom Baick claims the film has rendered “less a historical figure and more an archetypal warrior who struggles to adjust to peace,’’ has a legacy that has become the topic of a great deal of dispute (Kyle’s estate had to retract a portion of his biography, and pay $1.8 million in damages to Jesse Ventura over defamation charges).
Black and white
Selma, then, should have been exactly the type of soaring drama set around flawed, important characters that tends to make a killing come award season. It won’t. The problem with Selma isn’t that it painted a beloved American figure in a less-than-glowing light. The problem is that it did so opposite a black protagonist.
Dunn noted that “in dramas that deal in race, Hollywood often focuses on a white hero, to the point that they become the center perspective that mutes the others.’’ There are plenty of examples of this. Kevin Costner will star in Black or White and McFarland, USA in the coming weeks. He took home an Oscar for another example, Dances With Wolves, in 1990. Sandra Bullock got an Oscar for The Blind Side, despite the fact NFL player Michael Oher had issues with his character. Clint Eastwood’s role in Gran Torino, Emma Stone’s in The Help, and Harrison Ford’s in the Indiana Jones franchise are all beloved.
While it does spend much of its time dealing with positive white characters like slain Boston priest James Reeb, and the droves of allies who traveled to Selma to participate in the penultimate march, the presence of these characters mostly serves to advance the plot. And even though LBJ was given on screen what Baick called “the rhetorical and moral highlight of his presidency when he echoed the key message of the Movement: We shall overcome,’’ this depiction of one of his most enduring legislative victories isn’t enough to make the film LBJ’s story.
The omissions in Sniper, Selma, and Lincoln, troublesome as they may be, should come as no surprise to moviegoers. Films will always fail as historical record. History takes place over days, months, even years, while films are confined to a few hours. The point is that they speak to the truth of the time or figure they cover. Dunn notes that “glaring omissions that happen in historical dramas are quite common, since film is an interpretation of data, even when based on a true story.’’ Viewers wishing for what Dunn repeatedly refers to as “a neat replica of history’’ have turned to the wrong medium to fulfill their needs, as budgets and attention spans place a cap on the information any one film can present to audiences.
Baick cuts to what he feels to be the heart of the issue critics have with Selma. “We as a nation want to believe that the Civil Rights Movement led to black equality, just as the post-Civil War America wanted to believe that the 13, 14, and 15th amendments led to black equality.’’ While emphasizing—much as Selma did—that “Johnson is never depicted in the film as being against black equality,’’ Baick thinks the film’s core message, however true, may have been too jarring for audiences. Knowing that LBJ “was sometimes at cross-purposes with Martin Luther King is to experience a form of historical cognitive dissonance.’’
Critique can add to the draw of any given film. It can also push directors and producers to safeguard against the repetition of certain mistakes. Dunn, for her part, pointed out that that defense of Selma is “not to say we can’t debate the film’s finer points as consumers, but it’s a given that we are dealing with an interpretation that will fall short of replicating history.’’
Still, in the way that Lincoln spoke to the slice of Lincoln’s life it covered, and Sniper speaks to the occupation of its protagonist, it seems that while “the basic moral principles and truths of the most important events, like Bloody Sunday, absolutely stand,’’ as Dunn said, “we’re dealing with LBJ rather than the fact that Selma gets to those pieces very accurately.’’
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com