The 2016 Jeff Nichols film Loving, is the story, not of a historic court case, but rather of the Lovings themselves—Mildred and Richard, a Black woman and white man in rural Virginia whose love would change the U.S. constitution. We come to that ultimate reality slowly in a film that opens with joy: the simple joy of a young couple in love and pregnant.
We move quickly to other images of joy including Mildred, Richard, and their friends: drag racing, dancing at a house party, etc. The film shows an American Southern past (it opens in the late 1950s) that is rarely seen on screen—one in which white and Black young adults play, celebrate, and love together.
So often in the media representations of that time, we see only segregation. And yes, that was the law of the land and certainly the reality for the majority of Americans, but we see in Richard and Mildred's rural county that separation was not always the case. There was community and that community was mixed.
At first, we are optimistic for the young couple who drive to Washington D.C. to be married. We see the tenderness in their relationship and devotion by Richard as he frames and hangs their marriage license on the wall of Mildred’s parents' home where they live until he can build a home for them on the acre of land he’s brought. Through the filmmaker’s use of music and other subtle visual cues, we are not completely comfortable as an audience, mirroring Richard and Mildred’s reality. As they go about their life together, they endure the stares of others—Black and white—reminding us that their relationship is not normal.
At night, the tension is drawn even more dramatically and ultimately we see why. I trembled when the county sheriff barged in on the couple in the dark of night, kicking down any doors in his way. I immediately thought of Breonna Taylor, Amir Locke, and too many others, of the ways that some laws have changed but many things remain much too much the same. Law enforcement still holds a power that can reign terror on the lives of others.
This scene jolts us back to the grim reality of Loving’s life and pulls us away from the joy at the film’s opening. We realize the couple drove to D.C. to be married because their relationship is illegal in Virginia. Richard and Mildred are thrown in jail that night, separate cells, Mildred visibly pregnant. Richard gets bailed out the next day, but no one is allowed to bail Mildred out until Monday and when the sheriff speaks to Richard, he does so with condescension, pity, and disgust. It is from the sheriff’s mouth that we hear the n-word for the one and only time in the film. The couple is given three choices: jail time, dissolve their marriage or move out of the state for 25 years (away from their friends, their family, their plot of land, all that they love). For them, the choice is difficult but obvious. D.C. it is.
By today’s action-packed film standards, the movie might feel slow to some students as it pulls the audience into the mendacity of the couple’s new life, which is punctuated by moments of tension as we are reminded of the danger that skirts the edges of their reality like when the couple decides to return to Virginia so that Richard’s mother can deliver Mildred’s baby. This decision is illegal. In the dark of the night, with Mildren hiding under a blanket in the back seat, Richard drives them back to Virginia shuffling Mildred to another car in the dead of the night and in the middle of nowhere.
But, we are given some relief. A safe birth, a beautiful baby in his mother’s arms. We think they’ve done it until a small gesture by Mildred’s father, who faces the window, alerts us to the danger still lingering. It is subtle details like this throughout the film—a glance here, a side-eye there, a lowered head, a look of disgust—that pull us into the Loving’s life so effectively. The film invites the viewer to slow down and watch carefully, to pay attention, to this love and to the details of the world around the Loving couple.
We know before we see him that the sheriff is there. Mildred hands her newborn to her sister and steps out of the house. Separately, again, they are taken to jail. Nichols uses a small black and white television set in the house in D.C. where the Loving couple lives to move us through time. We see the Space Race. We see Martin Luther King, Jr., and we see the couple’s family grow. From one child to three.
The news footage on the television is also what sets into motion the first act that will become the reason the Lovings go down in history. With the Civil Rights Movement beamed into households nationwide, new possibilities come to mind and it is Ms. Laura (the family friend who takes the couple in) who says, “you need to get you some civil rights,” and encourages Mildred to write to Bobby Kennedy, Attorney General at the time. Mildred does. And it works. Kennedy forwards her letter to the ACLU and a young and hungry Virginia lawyer, with very little experience, wants the case. He sees its potential to go federal.
At this point, the film shifts. In the earlier portions, the film favored Richard, his lead, his initiative: taking Mildred to D.C. to get married, trying to bail her out of jail, buying land, and planning to build them a house. The latter half is all Mildred. We see her in command. She writes the letter. She sets the meeting with the lawyer. She tells Richard they will go and the date and time. She forces the issue. She decides that she doesn’t want to raise her children in the city, without grassy fields to play in, away from her family. She is hopeful. It is Mildred’s hope that keeps us going as the filmmaker pulls on two constant threads: conviction and a hint of fear.
As the couple’s case meanders through the court system (for nearly ten years from their first arrest), we see Mildred’s conviction in what she is doing grow stronger and stronger, just as we also see the couple slip closer and closer to the edge of danger, moving back to Virginia despite the law. The film offers these two juxtaposing realities as a kind of real-life two-step dancing across the screen, a dance we want to see through to the end.
For students, this film is important not only because of the historic court case that the Loving couple’s life led to, but also because it reminds students that the constitution of the United States is not set in stone. It can be altered. It has been before and it will be again. Beyond all of that, it also reminds us that there are real people behind the legal cases that alter the constitution. In fact, the film’s greatest strength lies in its ending as we see snippets of the court case juxtaposed against the life that Mildred, Richard, and their three children are living. In their life, we see the truth, beauty, and love—three things we could all use a little more of.
This title is ideal for Black History Month library programming or developing collections centered on racial issues.
Resources for Teaching about the 50th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia (1967) and/or for Teaching Loving:
https://www.intofilm.org/resources/1314
https://lovingproject.com/the-loving-project-study-guide/
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/loving-v-virginia-1967
https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/general/The%20Loving%20Story%20Study%20Guide_0.pdf