Rustin
Colman Domingo breathes hellfire and magnetism into the personality of the larger-than-life civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.
Freedom warrior: Colman Domingo
The 1963 ‘March on Washington’ has passed into legend, but it didn’t organise itself. While most of us are familiar with Martin Luther King’s stirring speech, “I have a dream…,” the man pulling the strings was struggling with more than logistics. Following the shocking Birmingham campaign earlier in the year, when white police officers set dogs on the peaceful protestors and black children were hosed down with high-pressure water jets, Bayard Rustin had to tread carefully. His dream was to mobilise 100,000 supporters to descend on the nation’s capital to plea for an end to racial segregation – and that took some organising. On the day, 2,000 buses and 21 chartered trains helped to convey 250,000 citizens to Washington D.C., an event, in his words, that could lead to “shutting down the Capitol Building.” There were also the amenities needed, the toilet facilities, the information kiosks…
Bayard Rustin (Colman Domingo) had had it harder than most, for not only was he born an African-American, but he was born a homosexual… It is hard to contemplate that after slavery ‘officially’ ended in 1865, the African-American remains at the mercy of a racist police state. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 is just one of many instances that highlights the continuing blunt end of a hideous injustice. In the words of the human rights activist Ella Baker (beautifully realised here by Audra McDonald), “this country has failed us over and over again. And even so, each day we forgive by fighting to make things right…”
But this is the story of Bayard Rustin, a magnetic voice in the wilderness who made both friends and enemies of many leading lights in the Civil Rights Movement. Considering that this is Rustin’s film – he has his name in the title – it is a shame that so many characters are rushed into the narrative at the start. It is not only confusing, but overwhelming. The film is at its best in its quieter moments and when the natural charisma of Colman Domingo is allowed to shine. While the facts are never less than interesting, it’s when Domingo breathes fire into the personality of his firebrand that the film truly comes alive. This man, repeatedly beaten down for the colour of his skin and for his love of other men, still maintains a smile as wide as the Mississippi.
The director George C. Wolfe, who previously directed Domingo in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, is good with actors and has whipped up quite a raft of performances from his illustrious cast. However, at times the acting is perhaps a little too ostentatious, which is why the quiet magnetism of Aml Ameen as Martin Luther King stands out. The last time Dr King was played so convincingly on screen was by David Oyelowo in Selma, which sounds a note of irony. Because both Oyelowo and Aml Ameen are English – as is Cynthia Erivo, who played the black American activist Harriet Tubman, Thandiwe Newton, who played Condoleezza Rice in Oliver Stone’s W., David Kaluuya, who played Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah, and Kingsley Ben-Adir, who played Malcolm X in One Night in Miami. There’s a doctorate to be written in there somewhere.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Colman Domingo, Aml Ameen, Chris Rock, Glynn Turman, Gus Halper, Jeffrey Wright, CCH Pounder, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Johnny Ramey, Michael Potts, Lilli Kay, Jordan-Amanda Hall, Jakeem Powell, Grantham Coleman, Jamilah Rosemond, Jules Latimer, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper, Frank Harts, Kevin Mambo, Carra Patterson, Bill Irwin, Cotter Smith, Jamar Williams, Audra McDonald.
Dir George C. Wolfe, Pro Bruce Cohen, Tonia Davis and George C. Wolfe, Ex Pro Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, Screenplay Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black, Ph Tobias A. Schliessler, Pro Des Mark Ricker, Ed Andrew Mondshein, Music Branford Marsalis, Costumes Toni-Leslie James, Dialect coach Elizabeth Himelstein.
Higher Ground/Bold Choices-Netflix.
106 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 17 November 2023. Cert. 15.
