Loving

Writer-director Jeff Nichols solemnly tackles one of the most influential civil rights cases of the late 1960s. When Mildred (Oscar nominee Ruth Negga) told Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) she was pregnant, they drove from rural Virginia to Washington, D.C., to get married. Richard was Caucasian and Mildred was African American, but interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia in 1958 under an “anti-miscegenation” statute enacted in 1924. Returning home, the couple were arrested by Sheriff Brooks (Marton Csokas) and his deputies. The judge offered a one-year suspended sentence if they'd leave Virginia and not return for 25 years. So the Lovings moved to Washington, D.C., but Mildred was determined to have Richard's midwife mother (Sharon Blackwood) deliver their child—which led to their second arrest. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 inspired Mildred to contact Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union. ACLU lawyers (Nick Kroll, Jon Bass) then took the case to the Supreme Court, resulting in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, which struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage—chronicled by a LIFE magazine photographer (Michael Shannon) as The Crime of Being Married. The reserved humility of taciturn Richard and shy, soft-spoken Mildred drains much of the drama out of this real-life story, but the acting itself is excellent. Recommended. (S. Granger)