Slow Train Coming

LOVING (B-minus) - We might need to sit down with Jeff Nichols and have a long talk. There is a sense of indulgence emanating from his two releases this year -- spring's "Midnight Special" and now "Loving," a biography of the interracial couple who took their case against the state of Virginia to the U.S. Supreme Court and changed history.

Nichols wowed us with his intense trio of debut films: "Shotgun Stories" in 2007, "Take Shelter" in 2011, and "Mud" in 2012. After a four-year break, he returned with his go-to leading man, Michael Shannon, for "Midnight Special," about a father and son on the run from the military who covet the boy's extra-sensory secrets. That one dragged under its two-hour running town and unraveled in the last reel. (Shannon has a cameo here playing against type.)

Here, again clocking in around two hours, Nichols gets as downright lethargic as the rural Virginia drawls of the low-key lead characters, Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton, "The Gift") and his wife, Mildred (Ruth Negga), turning a tender love story into a bit of an endurance contest. Nichols was determined to avoid the classic hero-lawyer angle, and he is to be commended for that. He was intent on making a narrowly focused movie that gets in bed with a couple and tells the story of their simple, easily identifiable relationship.

If only that was enough to rivet you to the big screen for two hours. "Loving" is a beautiful movie that tells a powerful story. But it takes its damn sweet time getting the narrative rolling. There is very little legal drama in the first half of the film. Instead, we nestle in with the Lovings and the day-to-day rhythms of their lives, much of it in unhappy exile in the urban setting of Washington, D.C., where they flee after agreeing to a suspended sentence in their native Virginia, and where they raise their children.

Negga is captivating as the quiet but forceful wife and mother who won't take this lying down. Mildred writes to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who refers them to the ACLU, whose lawyers stumble out of the gate trying to get their case moving again. Edgerton's Richard comes off as a monosyllabic grump from start to finish. Little nuance there. We watch their daily routines, but we never really connect with them. They don't raise their voices or nag each other; instead, they come off as artificially saintly, and a little boring. Their secret forays sneaking back into Virginia to live for periods of time lack tension.

My movie companion pointed out that the film fails to show us how the Lovings met. We dive right into a scene in which Mildred tells Richard that she is pregnant. So off they go to D.C. to get legally married (though it will still be criminalized in Virginia). From there on, it's domestic drudgery and bland bliss. The children come off as props. Despite strong performances, we don't get sucked into the deep bond between husband and wife.

The legal angle is understated and effective. Nick Kroll (from TV's "The League") is particularly compelling as the humble lawyer, Bernie Cohen. The Supreme Court's decision in June 1967 is conveyed via one side of a phone conversation.

A lot of scenes involve telephone calls and car rides, which don't make for scintillating cinema. (Richard was a weekend racing aficionado, but even those scenes lack much zip.) If Nichols had been a presidential candidate in 2016, he would have been derided as "low energy." He has shown himself to be a powerful filmmaker in the past. But lately his worst instincts have been exaggerated. Here he seems intent on creating an anti-drama.

A quiet slice of life can make for a great film, and we don't need car chases or Kevin Costner arguing heroically before the Supreme Court to make a satisfying drama. But is a little passion -- especially in a love story -- too much to ask for?

THE LOVING STORY (2011) (B+) - At the other end of the spectrum, this HBO documentary skews away from the quiet love story and shifts the focus equally to the legal battle and the two lawyers from the ACLU. As such, it suffers from the opposite problem of "Loving" -- the couple is more of a vehicle for the young white lawyers to play the heroes and change history.

The archival footage is amazingly comprehensive. The Lovings were documented extensively at the time. (In Nichols' drama, the Life photographer who snapped the classic photo of the couple on their couch, is played by Michael Shannon, keeping alive his streak of appearing in all of the director's films.) And we hang out with the Lovings and their children in their home and at their court hearings.

The lawyers, Bernie Cohen and Phil Hirschkop, are still around to give their side of the story. The couple's children fill in some family history. (Mildred died in 2008; Richard in a car crash in 1975.)

The story is an epic one. When the lawyers pushed to get the couple's conviction overturned, they lost in state court but succeeded in getting an appealable decision that they could take to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the memorable opinion from the Virginia trial judge, we get this infamous quote:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The judge did not explain why the white man was living on the red man's continent -- and running that continent's judicial system. But I digress.

"The Loving Story," directed by Nancy Buirski ("Afternoon of a Faun"), is a solid by-the-numbers telling of an incredible American story (how did Nichols manage to drain all that drama?), and she benefits greatly from that archival footage from two sets of documentaries from the 1960s and from advisers like the legendary D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

Nothing fancy here; just getting out of the way from a mesmerizing story.

BONUS TRACK
The song over the closing credits of the documentary, the gorgeous "Slow Train" by the Staples Singers:



And our title track:



You have to love this idiot-savant uber-comment about Dylan under the video: 

The lyrics are good but he sounds strange when he sings :(