George C. Wolfe | Rustin / 2023

moving history ahead as fast as you possibly can

by Douglas Messerli

 

Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black (screenplay, based on a story by Breece), George C. Wolfe (director) Rustin / 2023

 

Rustin is a meaningful and almost visionary film that has, nonetheless, several problems, the most notable being that it centers upon a figure undeservedly unknown today. Yet in attempting to present his history, it moves far too quickly—particularly in the beginning the film—to allow a not fully aware viewer to even get his footing, let alone to figure out what is quite going on in the plot.

      Right from the beginning we dive vaguely into the life of the man, Bayard Rustin (Colman Domingo) who, it is inferred, has helped Martin Luther King, Jr. (Aml Ameen) realize his potential, while just as quickly we move into new territories that will become essential in the story’s history of how he came to change attitudes regarding black rights.

      And as we approach the film’s first major event regarding Rustin’s advocation of King leading a mass protest against the forthcoming Democratic National Convention, King arguing “I’m not your man,” Rustin—both the character and the movie—is already off and running. As The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis observes, “a few beats later and his [King’s] gaze is…directed up, but now at Rustin, who’s towering above King, challenging him” with the argument that King’s presence will send an essential message to the party and its front-running nominee, John F. Kennedy. Just as suddenly we are presented with counter arguments from the leaders of the NAACP (The National Association the Advancement of Colored People), Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock) and the US Representative for Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell (Jeffrey Wright), who throughout becomes a ferocious opponent to Rustin.

       Given the intelligent arguments Rustin seems to be making, it appears ridiculous that Wilkins and Powell demonstrate such complacent opposition. We have hardly gotten to know the central character of this film, let alone come to understand his influence over King before Wilkins, Powell, and others demand his removal.

       We have no reason, or at least no case is yet made for why Rustin is convinced that if he hands over his resignation that King will reject it, let alone can we fully comprehend why when King accepts it, Rustin would perceive it as such a betrayal. Most of what we discover, through innuendo, is that Rustin is gay at a time when being so was still criminal in some states and almost unthinkable to a man working closely with black religious institutions. Yet we are not yet privy to what precisely his relationship with the King family has been—some of innuendos threaten to falsely describe King as his lover—or how he has managed to so effect King, let alone do we fully comprehend his previous contributions to black rights, despite the film’s brief cameos of history.

      Fortunately, as Rustin momentarily drops out the picture, the movie slows down and retraces some of Rustin’s career, while still without fully explaining what he is doing at the present except for feeling deeply hurt by King’s rejection.

      In short, one of the film’s biggest assets, the dynamism of actor Domingo is also one of its problems. It is as if, for a long parts of the movie, we are mentally tumbling to keep up, to discover who this rather amazing man is and how he got there, without the film fully resolving that dilemma. In a series of jolts forward followed by moments of slower pacing, director George C. Wolfe often throwing out new events and information before backing away to explain what they actually mean and why those brilliant ideas are constantly being rejected by the various conflicted groups of the black movements.           Gradually, however, we are, as Dargis puts it, “hooked”; but not as she claims in the first five moments. I had read a great deal about Rustin before I saw this film, and knew of his Quaker background, his flirtation with Communism, his commitment long before King to non-violence. I had read about his intense ability to perceive the larger pictures of situations that most black leaders saw only as passing incidents. And finally, I knew even before viewing this film of his eloquence for convincing those whom he most felt could express his vision to the larger community and nation.

       I realized how those who were jealous of him or could not see the larger picture used his sexuality to isolate and even totally exclude him from the world he had helped to accomplish. But for many of the film’s audience, perhaps the majority, it surely took a far longer period for the film to establish Rustin as a full character, a man of great modesty but also of dreams so large that they would change the entire course of black history, while he simultaneously watched the burgeoning gay community and himself being crushed for their own in-born identities.

      It is only when the film has established some of these matters that it can then fully steam ahead with its central subject at the helm, Rustin’s sudden vision of bringing together a march of 100, 000 ordinary and extraordinary blacks to march on Washington, D.C to meet together at the mall, and allow many great leaders, King, in particular, to speak their message to America’s heart. Rustin’s was the dream behind King’s great speech.

       Once we have caught our breath, watching the man suddenly bring together a vast network of individuals which accomplish everything from raising money, acquiring busses, reserving trains, setting up major sounds systems on the mall, finding a body of police to protect the protesters (both the National Park Policemen and the Washington, DC police force refused to fully cooperate, Rustin having to turn to an unarmed New York City police force shipped into the National Capital), finding beds for their overnight stay, and even providing them with sandwiches (peanut butter and jelly instead of cheese since Rustin realized that the latter might spoil in the hot sun), only them do we begin to actually realize how remarkable Rustin was.

 

     At the very same moment, moreover, while being terrified of being caught for his sexual acts and promising not to engage in such activity, he managed to disengage himself from his white lover Tom (Gus Halper) and enter in a new relationship with a young closeted black minister, Elias Taylor (Johnny Ramey) on the board of NAACP, which further helps us to comprehend the amazing human being Rustin was, attempting to balance a civil rights action never before imagined while maintaining his sexuality in front of the binoculars of the terrible voyeurs of history such as J. Edgar Hoover, Strom Thurmond, Powell, and several others.

      Bringing in national leaders such as labor organizer Cleveland Robinson (Michael Potts), Rustin was able to keep the sideswipes of the various opposing black groups such as SNCC (The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), and early followers of Malcolm X at arm’s length while yet keeping their constituents involved.

      As critic Peyton Robinson observes, writers Dustin Lance Black and Julian Breece “provide a witty script, and Domingo executes its humor flawlessly. There are plenty of laughs that break up some of the more touching moments….” The film, however, still has a tendency to show us  something which we aren’t quite sure we comprehend before it explains what it is that we are seeing, putting the proverbial cart before the donkey of the film’s liberal politics. Too often we observe an action before we recognize just how amazing what we are seeing truly is. Fortunately, Domingo brings it together with an energy that is often haunting in not nearly supernatural.

      By film’s end, however, we realize that Bayard Rustin was anything but divine; he was rather an often failed human being with a brilliant ability to strategize about everything but, perhaps, his personal life. There were compromises, some of them necessary, others meaningless, but by the end he brought together not just 100,000 people but 250,000, still largest number of people gathered for a protest on our national lawn we call the Mall. Mahalia Jackson sang, and King gave his brilliant “I Have a Dream” speech. The gathering was ultimately responsible for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

      Rustin’s genius was not wrapped in any divinity, but in tied to his perception, as Los Angeles Times reviewer Glenn Whipp summarizes: that if “you want to change the world? Gather some like-minded souls, roll up your sleeves and dream.”

      That the man who accomplished so much for his race could not do the same for those who shared his sexuality surely saddened him. But given the times and the problems he faced, he had to make choices, mostly moral choices which others, like Taylor, could not face. When, after the successful rally, the leaders were invited to the White House to talk to the president, Rustin determined to stay behind, donning instead a trashman’s uniform to help pick up the detritus left behind. He had made it happen and surely realized that his presence would only create friction to further accomplishments. He was a man at home with himself, aware where his talents lay, and who he was.

      That he was virtually excised from the history books only demonstrates how much more we need to awaken ourselves to what really happened in our nation’s troubled life.

 

Los Angeles, December 4, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).