Movie Review

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Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

Martin Luther King Jr.: The Man and the Dream. Prod. by Tim Kirby and Lina Gopaul. Black Audio Films, 1997. 50 mins. (A&E Home Video, P. O. Box 2284, South Burlington, VT 05407)

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has emerged as the foremost African American historical personality of the twentieth century. From his first appearance as a spokesman for the eleven-month Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955-1956, King was an object of curiosity. Inquiring minds have continued to crave a glimpse of the reality behind the reflection, of the person behind the phenomenon. Martin Luther King Jr.: The Man and the Dream, an entry in A&E's Biography series, stirs the craving with a promise of a king unknown to the populace, of a man torn by his public image and conflicted in his private life. 1

The film opens with black-and-white footage of the cortege returning King's body from Memphis, Tennessee, where he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, to his family home in Atlanta. A dirge accompanies the death march as clipped frames blur into an indiscernible color swirl perhaps intended to appear fantasized, preternatural, or surreal. Thus emerge the film's dual pictorial motifs, dream and journey. Surreal scenes and images in motion along a road recur, often to distraction. . . .

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