TORONTO – The history-altering story of Mildred and Richard Loving has been catalogued through photos, news features, a TV biopic and documentary, but writer-director Jeff Nichols still felt it was essential to revisit the interracial couple’s life.
The Lovings were at the centre of a landmark 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that unanimously struck down all anti-miscegenation laws. Still, it wasn’t until the year 2000 that Alabama became the last state to overturn laws that criminalized interracial relationships.
“They weren’t being enforced, but … it isn’t simply that a gavel strikes and the work is accomplished,” said Nichols, who helmed the new film “Loving,” which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
“It’s why the film feels extraordinarily necessary.”
In “Loving,” Australian actor Joel Edgerton and Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga offer uncanny portrayals of the soft-spoken Virginia couple who became unlikely civil rights activists in their determination to be married.
Unable to tie the knot in their segregated home state, Richard, who was white, and Mildred, who was African-American and Native American, head to Washington, D.C., to marry in June 1958. A month later, arrest warrants are issued, with the local sheriff and his deputies bursting into the couple’s bedroom to put them behind bars.
The Lovings are indicted for violating the state’s Racial Integrity Act and are advised to plead guilty. A judge sentences the couple to a year in jail, but suspends their sentences provided they leave the state and not return together for 25 years.
Production on “Loving” began last fall following the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage. Nichols said when he started writing “Loving” in 2012, he saw an obvious social connection between the Lovings and the modern-day pursuit of marriage equality.
“Their marriage was not an act of defiance — it was an act of love,” said Nichols.
“I think it disarms anyone that would try to discredit the story as simply propaganda, or this left-wing motivated liberal Hollywood out to make us think something we don’t want to think — and that’s absurd. That has nothing to do with who these people were.
“They genuinely loved each other, and the government and society stepped in and told them they couldn’t, and that was just strictly unfair.”
The Lovings’ surviving child, Peggy, served as a consultant on the film. Nichols said the intimate photos of the pair captured by Life Magazine photographer Grey Villet and “The Loving Story” documentary released in 2011 served as key resources and great companion pieces to “Loving.”
“The great thing that the documentary does — that the film just couldn’t, given the strict point of view that I held to — is that you actually get to find out about some of the intricacies of the court case, and how the court case travelled through the gauntlet that is the path to the Supreme Court,” said Nichols.
“It’s really fascinating and uplifting,” he added. “It kind of redeemed the possibility of justice in our country for me, that we know this system is good, and that it can work, because we needed it to work desperately in that particular situation.”
Throughout “Loving,” Richard, who was a brickmason, is seen constructing the couple’s home, which he also did in real life when they were allowed to return to Virginia, said Nichols.
“On the one hand, it’s kind of an easy metaphor. But what I think is important about that rhythm is that day in, day out, despite the circumstances they were in, they had to live their lives,” said Nichols.
“He had to go to work. These were not wealthy people…. I think it’s important to this story and the way that it was told that you realize their life has been fettered, but they haven’t stopped living.”
“Loving” will open in Toronto on Friday, in Vancouver and Montreal on Nov. 18, and in other cities on Nov. 25.
— Follow @lauren_larose on Twitter.
