The film portrays the interracial couple who made history.
Rich and Mildred Loving love each other. It’s as simple as that.
Living in a seemingly serene pocket of rural Virginia, the two travel to Washington, DC, after Mildred gets pregnant and marry in the simplest of ceremonies. The Lovings want what any couple in 1958 wants: to own a home close to their families, to raise a family of their own, and to live in peace.
However, the outside world can’t see anything but what they’ve deemed unacceptable: a white man married to a black (and Native American) woman. Someone calls in a tip to the police, who break into the Lovings’ home in the middle of the night and arrest them. Despite the marriage certificate hung proudly on the wall and Mildred’s pregnancy, the Lovings are banished from the state of Virginia for being married to each other. When Mildred grows weary of DC, she writes an appeal to Robert Kennedy. Their case makes it to the Supreme Court, and the rest is—literally—history.
Loving v. Virginia is a landmark case for civil rights and marriage equality, and I expected such a historic decision to produce a court-focused movie, but Loving isn’t about that at all. There’s less than a minute dedicated to the Supreme Court hearing, cutting back to focus on the Lovings and their children. When they win the case, we hardly notice the reporters as the couple embraces. This story is about them. Loving is a slow, tender portrait of a marriage, focusing on the way that husband and wife support and care for each other in the day-to-day.
Loving is a quiet film with the same sensory enjoyment and attention to detail that director Jeff Nichols lavished on Mud. It’s slow—at times, perhaps a bit too slow—but it takes its …
Source: Christianity Today Most Read