Be prepared to be in tears just watching the trailer for Loving. The movie tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, who are sentenced to prison in Virginia in 1958 for getting married. This was the couple at the center of the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that overturned laws against interracial marriage.
The film debuted in Cannes a couple months ago and won't be in theaters until early November. Actors Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga play the Lovings and both have some really poignet lines that are shared in the trailer.
The Lovings' lawyer asks Richard:
“Is there anything you’d like me to say to the Supreme Court justices of the United States?” and Richard replies: “Yeah. Tell the judge I love my wife.”
I also love the when Mildred says:
“I know we have some enemies. But we have some friends too.”
While researching the actors I discovered that Ruth Negga is biracial herself, she was born to an Ethiopian father and an Irish mother. So I would have to imagine this was an especially powerful experience for her. She said in an interview with The Guardian,
“Partly my feelings of difference were down to having parents of different races. I had quite a scattered childhood. I was Irish in London, because I had my secondary school education there. I never really fitted anywhere. I didn’t feel it was a negative thing and I was never made to feel different – I just knew I was.”
In the same interview she sites Mildred Loving as a one of her heroes,
“Mildred shied away from the spotlight completely, but she changed the course of American legal history. All she wanted to do was marry the man she loved. It took nine years. Can you imagine taking on the might of the American legal system? They were poor and fairly uneducated, but they just wanted to be with one another.”
Even though I know it to be true, it is amazing to me that this is such recent history in our country. This is definitely a movie I will be going to and I will be bringing my 12 year old daughter as well so she can understand the difficult path many multiracial individuals and interracial couples have had. I hope that everyone who has any connection to the multiracial community goes out and supports this movie. The movie will be rated PG-13.
