Loving (2016)

LOVING  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jeff Nichols
    Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Will Dalton,
    Sharon Blackwood, Marton Csokas, David Jensen,
    Michael Shannon, Matt Malloy, Christopher Mann
The true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the aptly named, mixed-race couple (she was black and he was white), whose 1967 Supreme Court case got miscegenation laws overturned across the United States. The movie spends very little time in court. (The Lovings chose not to attend the climactic argument before the justices in Washington.) Mostly it's a portrait of a marriage in snapshots - literal snapshots when a photographer shows up to shoot a profile for Life. The period decor is perfect, from the cars to the clothes to the dishes in the kitchen sink, and Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga give award-caliber performances as the Lovings. (Richard doesn't talk much - his wife is much more articulate - but watch how much Edgerton conveys with body language.) The melodramatic potential is extreme, but Nichols, like his actors, never overplays his hand. Watching something like this now, you can't help thinking about the legal battle 50 years later over same-sex marriage, and the same questions keep coming up in both cases: What took so long? And what's the big deal?