MLK/FBI | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Sam Pollard (12, 104 mins)
A searing documentary that traces both the life of black activist Martin Luther King Jnr and the birth of the FBI, an organisation that tried to destroy King and may indeed have played a hand in his untimely assassination. King was becoming a force to be reckoned with in the early 1960s, his church roots and oratory skills crucial in his preaching of peaceful resistance to his followers amidst hideous racism and bigoted violence.
In 1963, at the climax of the March On Washington, King delivered his iconic “I have a dream” speech – restored here to its full glory. The Civil Rights Movement was gaining traction, but ultimately it was more than the obvious racists of the south who were trying to bring him and his movement down: it was the American government itself. Initially investigated because of his links to Jewish ‘communist’ Stanley Levinson, an early supporter and close friend, King was bugged; Pollard’s film depicts transcripts taken of his private moments, his numerous affairs used as blackmail against him and his movement.
The Federal Bureau Of Investigations, helmed by J. Edgar Hoover and romanticized as good guys in American popular culture of the time, was out to discredit King, or at the very least put pressure on him to control his fervour. MLK/FBI uses talking heads sparingly, voiceovers covering footage of the era as historians add their opinions to the attempted undermining of King through his extramarital lapses. Pollard portrays Hoover as jealous of King, a Nobel award-winning firebrand who started to have the ear of President Lyndon Johnson until he began criticizing the war in Vietnam.
This is a rich documentary, hinting at Martin Luther King’s inner depths and contradictions as well as alarming government interference in protest movements – all incredibly relevant in the era of BLM, and offering plenty of considered insight into a divided America that has not gone away.
Available on various platforms for digital download now
words KEIRON SELF