Behind the Movement: The Television Movie

BEHIND THE MOVEMENT

Living history. It is one thing to be living history. It is another, quite another to be living as though you are consciously aware that you are living history. Behind the Movement covers a tumultuous few days between Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her seat to the one-day boycott to protest segregation. I figure that everyone involved was aware of the story's importance. Pity that such importance blocked out any sense that the people were involved were human.

Montgomery, Alabama's black community is already on edge after the murder of Emmett Till. Among those upset to quietly enraged is seamstress Rosa Parks (Meta Golding). Mrs. Parks calls her husband Raymond (Roger Guenveur Smith) and asks him to buy milk before she leaves work. She boards the city bus and will not give up her seat when told to.

Her refusal gets her arrested, where she talks to a woman in the next cell. The other woman may have been in jail for defending herself against an abusive man, but that was nothing compared to what Mrs. Parks did. The demure, proper Mrs. Parks may be the perfect test case to fight the segregation laws. NAACP lawyer E.D. Nixon (Isaiah Washington) gets the importance of the situation. So does local community activist, Professor Jo Ann Robinson (Loretta Devine). Everyone, save perhaps the Parks couple, understands how important this is.

Eventually, Mrs. Parks agrees to be the test case. Now, it is time to rapidly organize what is intended as a one-day boycott to coincide with Mrs. Parks' trial. The organizers will need all the help that they can get. That means turning to A. Philip Randolph (Al Mitchell), head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters labor union. It also means turning to the various church ministers, including a young up-and-coming preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. (Lashaun Clay). Mr. and Mrs. Parks may have misgivings and fears, but history will not be denied. 

Behind the Movement is in the tradition of "important stories told in very serious tones" telefilms. Everyone, cast and crew, knows that this is oh so serious and oh so important. They are not exactly wrong in that idea. The Montgomery bus boycott and the slow but steady push to change is still a vital story to know. However, Behind the Movement is one where everyone is so noble, so serious, that no one is allowed to be human. Almost every statement is historic. Almost everyone presented is important. Almost every action is loaded with significance. 

This is where Behind the Movement went wrong, oh so very wrong. By behaving as though everyone and everything is of such lofty weight, Behind the Movement forgot that there were actual people involved. When, for example, Randolph and Reverend Ralph Abernathy (Keith Arthur Bolden) go to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, everyone there realizes the importance, the significance, the epoch changing appearance of Reverend King.

King would leave a long-lasting legacy on American history. However, when Behind the Movement takes place, King was still a new figure in Montgomery. At the time of the boycott, Dr. King was a month shy of twenty-seven years old. To have Randolph, Abernathy and Nixon behave as though they were now in the presence of greatness is already bad. To suggest, as Behind the Movement does, that they were all aware of it, ironically diminishes Dr. King. It does not help that director Aric Avelino bathes Dr. King in an almost divine light when Randolph, Abernathy and Nixon are in King's office to discuss the boycott.

I do not think that Behind the Movement should have painted King as some bumbling kid. However, over and over throughout the film, everyone behaved as though they knew that the boycott was of worldwide importance right from the get-go. There is an air of profundity in Behind the Movement that does what a lot of historic pieces do. They rob the individuals of their humanity, trading in lofty images to replace flawed, even frightened people. 

People are reduced to almost walking audio-animatronic figures, always noble and aware. The closest that Behind the Movement has in terms of levity is when Alfonso Campbell (Sir Brodie) is, to use modern terms, voluntold to coordinate carpool groups. Even that was in a blink-and-you-miss-it manner. To be fair, there is a slightly comic moment when the bold Professor Robinson hoodwinks a campus security guard to let them exit the campus by claiming to be doing end-of-term grading when they had actually been using campus equipment to make flyers.

Apart from that though, Behind the Movement never failed to make everyone very grand, noble, aware of how important this particular case, this particular boycott, was to world history. Ironically, treating everything that everyone in Behind the Movement did as this lofty moment robbed us of a potentially good story. Stories that transform people into monuments tend to be bad. Stories that transform monuments into people tend to be good. Behind the Movement is squarely in the former category. 

This grand manner extends to almost all the performances. The standout for me is Loretta Devine as Professor Robinson. She is always a welcome sight, and here she brought what little humor there was. I do not think that one needs to go into the other performances. This is not to say that they were bad. They were just all the same, playing everyone as these noble figures. They differentiate only in degrees of seriousness. 

Meta Golding does her best to make Rosa Parks into a less secure figure, but she still carries such a sense of history that it diminishes Mrs. Parks. Roger Guenveur Smith seems wasted as the eternally supportive Raymond, though to be fair he looks enough like Harry Belafonte that I think Smith should play him in a Belafonte biopic. 

Perhaps the worst of the "EVERYTHING I DO AND SAY IS IMPORTANT TO HISTORY" performance was that of Isaiah Washington as E.D. Nixon. Washington's Nixon was so loaded with the weight of history one half-expected him to literally walk on water. 

I think that much of the blame for Behind the Movement being so self-serious is on Katrina O'Gilvie's screenplay. The telefilm is loaded with some almost cringe bits of dialogue. Having a scene where a woman who survived abuse by attacking her attacker comments that Rosa Parks was the brave one is already a curious parallel to draw. Having Parks comment, "I just figure some things are worth standing up for" makes it almost cross into the pompous. 

Behind the Movement might be a good way to start learning about Rosa Parks' story. It is not a good way, though, to find the woman behind the movement.

1913-2005

4/10