What I Watched -- Loving

Loving is the personal story behind the United States Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia, which put an end to the state's ban on interracial marriage.

The film stars Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton and Mildred and Richard Loving, two unassuming people in love who want nothing more than to be left alone.  I find it interesting that such an American story is conveyed to us through two actors who were born in Ethiopia and Australia, respectively.  Before I knew that, I assumed that the relative lack of dialogue in the film was intended to illustrate that they were quiet, private people; perhaps it also had to do with difficulties with accents.

One thing I really liked about it was that there was very little between the two lead actors about the fact that one was black and one was white.  That's obviously the central difficulty in the movie, but -- as one might expect in real life -- by the time Mildred and Richard get around to getting married, it's just not something they talk about any longer.  It's simply a part of life that they have grown so used to that they hardly seem to notice it, even though everyone else does.

Bottom line: two wonderful under-performances carry a simple but powerful story -- and it's a history lesson, to boot.