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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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A Civil Rights History Lesson
This series allows the viewer to see inside the private and public life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his family. Paul Winfield is an exceptional actor and his protrayal of Dr. King is outstanding. Viewers of this series will learn details of the courtship of Coretta Scott King through Dr. King's assassination. Most notable and enjoyable to see are the cameo appearances of all four of Dr. King's children throughout the series. It is a must see.
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The struggle to do good
I've seen a few movies on King and have gotten something out of all of them. What I particularly enjoyed about this presentation is how it showed King's vulnerability, his concerns over where political activism would take his life, and how it would effect (even endanger) his family. That's a quandary for many activists, activists we'll never know the names of. I know lawyers who have challenged large polluting businesses and have received threats for their efforts. There are people all over this country/world challenging powerful interests in one way or another who encounter challenges similar to those that King did, or Jesus did.
This DVD provides a good depiction of how it is that people often choose to keep supporting efforts for justice, including people in the entertainment industry like Tony Bennett, and people who once were part of the establishment like Ramsey Clark - both of whom make appearances in the film.
I'm going to get a copy of this DVD and donate it to a Goodwill after all my friends and co-workers have seen it. I want to be sure that people with few resources have a chance to discover it.
"The United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." -MLK
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Finally, both MLK & MX are on DVD!
Having enjoyed watching the movie "Malcolm X" with Denzel Washington in the title role, I wondered if a movie had been made about the other major figure in the civil-rights/human-rights movement of the 1950s & '60s, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. I searched Amazon's DVD section for him, & sure enough, there was a movie--with Paul Winfield playing the title role. Although the movie itself was made in 1978, the DVD's copyright year is this very year, 2005. The DVD bonus material includes interviews of Ossie Davis, who knew & admired both MLK & MX, as well as played Daddy King in the movie. I was amazed to learn that Al Freeman Jr (who played Elijah Muhammad in the MX movie) also played one of MLK's colleagues in the MLK movie, & that all 4 of the real King children (Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter & Bernice) played other characters in the movie.
Among the differences between the movie & the facts is that the church bombing in which the 4 girls died actually happened after, instead of before, MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech. Also, the funeral scene shows 4 caskets, whereas in real life one family opted for a separate funeral. As for the meeting between MLK & MX, it happened in Washington DC surrounded by reporters & photographers, not in Chicago behind a closed door; in fact, MX had already been killed by the time MLK went to Chicago. And of course, the names of a few characters were changed.
All in all, it's a wonderful movie, with 3 parts lasting about an hour & a half each. Now that I have DVDs of both MLK & MX, I keep them side by side in front of the rest of my DVD collection.
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TIMELESS
What's funny is I was just asking why KING had not been released on DVD, having watched it ALL DAY this past King Day on TV One anad to my surprise...BOOM! It came out on Jan. 11th. Having grown up watching King I'm at a loss for words...the late Paul Winfield's protrayal of Dr. King was superb, and the march/arrest scenes were almost identical to the actual footage. Watching King for me was almost like being there, I only wish that I'd been blessed with the chance to meet him in person as my mother did. That having been said,off to Media Play & Best Buy I go, GOD BLESS DR. KING(RIP) and PAUL WINFIELD(RIP).
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Great intro
This miniseries is great in that it presents Dr. King as the complex human being that he was with some of his insecurites and personal issues intact as opposed to the saint that he is often portrayed. The intracacies behind the Birmingham, Memphis, and Vietnam campaigns are handled well and Winfield makes a very good MLK. Cicely Tyson does very well as Coretta and incidentally, Rosa Parks is played by MLK's daughter Yolanda. The scenes of MLK smoking cigarettes and the adultery issue will shock a lot of people, but after all, the man was born in Atlanta and not Bethlehem, and these are based on acknowledged facts.
However, these is a scene that will annoy historians and Malcolm X fans. The treatment of King's meeting with M/X is an unfair fictionalization of what really happened. M/X is shown as hatemongering lunatic who encourages people in the ghettoes to burn down their cities. The producers have Malcolm confused with a later generation of militants, as the record shows that while the real Malcolm had his faults, he never publicly condoned mindless violence aside from self-defense.
This aside, and the composition of characters as prototypes of Bayard Rustin and Jesse Jackson aisde, this stays pretty close to the facts. Watch and enjoy, but read a good King bio such as "Bearing the Cross" by Taylor Branch, or "Let the Trumpet Sound" by Stephen Oates afterwards to get a broader picture.
