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Loving - review


Mildred and Richard Loving should never have achieved fame. Dirt-poor, uneducated, and living in a backwater in Virginia, their only ambition was to be with each other and to lead a life devoid of trouble.

Their apparently innocent decision to get married in 1958, however, was to change the legal history of their country, leading to a Supreme Court decision striking down miscegenation state laws (in the so-aptly named Loving v Virginia case) and arguably paving the way, decades later, for another Supreme Court decision, allowing same-sex marriage, by declaring marriage a fundamental right.

Loving, which is currently available on iPlayer, is not a court drama. It's not a romance, or even a civil rights epic, full of senseless, gruesome violence and triumphant victory scenes. It is a pared-down, understated study of reluctant heroes, depicting two people buffeted by circumstances bigger than them, and, certainly at the beginning, mostly beyond their understanding.

Most of the "action" of the story takes place off screen and we only witness the repercussions, and the intrusions of the outside world into this couple's lives. Richard's brooding presence at the side of Mildred's quiet determination are beautifully and movingly portrayed. It is difficult to show in images ideas that, by definition, don't physically exist, but Jeff Nichols, the director, manages it superbly.

When asked by his lawyer if he has anything to say to the SCOTUS Justices, Richard Loving simply says: "just tells them I love my wife." And as the title of the film suggests, rightly using the poetically serendipitous name of its subjects, love is what this story is about, how deep a force it can be, and how it does, in the end, seem to win.
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