Loving

Jeff Nichols should make all civil rights dramas. He’s not interested in making history, in exposing melodramatic movie racism or in grand speeches and moments of righteousness. “Loving,” a film about the landmark Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia that allowed interracial marriages, separates the broader cultural and historical significance of this couple’s story from their more personal struggles to keep a family together. “Loving” is impressive because it ignores so many clichés, but more so because it’s a modest drama that’s intimate and understanding when looking at this romance.

The film’s first words are said in close-up on Mildred (Ruth Negga): “I’m pregnant.” It cuts to Richard (Joel Edgerton), who breathes a long pause before smiling. Before we know what time period this movie is even set in, or whom these people are, we know that this pregnancy will be a point of contention, whether because of their skin color or because of reasons we can only begin to surmise. The question of if they can make it work will be far more interesting than the inevitable court decision.

And in Mildred and Richard’s country lives, the Supreme Court doesn’t even register as a concept. Upon traveling to Washington D.C. to get married in a court house, Mildred asks her brother what the city is like. For the people in Mildred’s family, their marriage is far less a question of decency but whether it will threaten to take Mildred away from the country. Integration nationwide may be on the minds of Mildred and Richard Loving, but it’s hardly the only challenge in their lives, and the movie feels more naturalistic and less overbearingly political as a result.

The courtroom drama in “Loving” too all happens in the background. On the day history is made, Richard is out doing his job as a construction worker, not in the halls of the Supreme Court. Here’s a guy who just wants to live his life and be with his wife and kids. Nichols dilutes the immediacy of the court case, with years passing between updates, and the legal battles are interspersed throughout traumatic life events, like their children being born, a brick being left in Richard’s car, or a Life Magazine photographer (Michael Shannon) coming to pay a visit. Nichols isn’t oblivious to the world around these two, but he doesn’t pretend to thrust them into a story greater than the actual scope of their lives.

Nichols successfully blended genres in his other film this year, the sci-fi, noir, chase movie “Midnight Special,” and more interesting in “Loving” is how he manages to create similarly brief moments of suspense and noir, like a covert plan to sneak Mildred into town to give birth. A car passes them on the road and performs an aggressive U-Turn, but it’s Mildred’s brother rather than a pursuer, and Nichols’s approach skillfully keeps us in a state of constant danger.

The economy in Nichols’s filmmaking likewise underscores Richard’s modest, no fuss personality. Richard hears that the sheriff may be out looking for them, and without a word he goes to work. Nichols shows three simple shots, Richard nailing something to the wall, a cutaway to Richard’s satisfaction and feeling of safety, and a quick shot back to reveal his marriage license. Turns out “that’s no good here.” Nichols does something similar when the Lovings reach their new home in the city. One shot in which they wordlessly glance at a small patch of grass with a tree growing out of it says all you need to know about how this home doesn’t represent their American dream.

“Loving” feels like a film intimately close with the way the Lovings actually lived their lives. There’s only one utterance of the N-word in the whole film. It does away with morality speeches that serve an end we already know. It’s not a movie any larger than the Lovings themselves.

3 ½ stars