Jeff Nichols Explains Why ‘Loving’ Is the Quietest Oscar-Bait Movie Ever
TheWrap Oscar magazine: “The material is so ripe for drama that if you put your foot on the gas pedal, you immediately risk looking silly,”...
Jeff Nichols has been a writer-director on every film in his brief but commanding body of work, and they all share similar DNA: masculinity confronting vulnerability, a brand of paranoia and a search for emotional truth.
[...] never has that vision been so fully expressed than with “Loving,” his take on the case of Richard and Mildred Loving, the couple who effectively invalidated laws against interracial marriage with a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1967.
“The material is so ripe for drama that if you put your foot on the gas pedal, you immediately risk looking silly and people don’t believe it,” Nichols said.
After they quietly travel out of state to wed, someone alerts the local sheriff to the pair’s shacking up, which was illegal in the state even with a marriage license.
Response to the film has seen both compliments for its gentle touch and outrage for what some call very little social progress since the age of the Lovings.