Rustin (film)

Rustin is a 2023 American biographical drama film directed by George C. Wolfe, from a screenplay by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black, and a story by Breece about the life of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company Higher Ground, the film stars Colman Domingo in the title role, alongside Chris Rock, Glynn Turman, Aml Ameen, Gus Halper, CCH Pounder, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Johnny Ramey, Michael Potts, Jeffrey Wright, and Audra McDonald. It is based on the true story of Rustin, who helped Martin Luther King Jr. and others organize the 1963 March on Washington.

Rustin premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023, and was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2023. The film received a limited theatrical release on November 3, 2023, before being released on Netflix on November 17. The film received generally positive reviews, with Domingo's performance garnering numerous accolades including nominations for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and SAG Award for Best Actor.

Plot
The film tells the story of the gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Rustin encourages Martin Luther King Jr. to lead a protest in Los Angeles ahead of the 1960 Democratic National Convention. However, Baptist minister and long-time New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and NAACP leader Roy Wilkins are highly critical of Rustin on account of his romantic orientation—calling him a "queen."

In the 1960s, Tom Kahn is Rustin's love partner while also working with the latter on expanding civil rights.

A. Philip Randolph who is respected at the NACCP for convincing Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8802 (ending racial discrimination in the defense industry) in 1941 and Truman to sign Executive Order 9981 (ending racial segregation in the armed forces) is amenable to be persuaded by Rustin to organize the 1963 March in Washington DC. However, skeptics at NAACP remind Rustin of the unsuccessful 1932 veterans protest in Washington. Because of objections of Roy Wilkins to Rustin's gay mannerisms, the leaders of NAACP and Whitney Young of the Urban League assent to the "Chief" (A. Philip Randolph) serving as the director of the March on Washington in 1963; the Chief later announces that Rustin will be the deputy director of the said March.

Strom Thurmond publicly accuses Bayard Rustin of being a communist.

The March in DC in August 1963 is intended to increase Congressional support for the passage of the civil rights bill Kennedy had proposed earlier in the year. Over 200,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and called for an end to legalized racial discrimination in the US. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the event.

Production
In February 2021, it was reported that George C. Wolfe would direct a film based on the life of Bayard Rustin from a script by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black. In October 2021, Colman Domingo was cast as Rustin. Chris Rock, Glynn Turman, and Audra McDonald also joined the cast. Later that month, Aml Ameen, CCH Pounder, Michael Potts, Bill Irwin, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Gus Halper, Johnny Ramey, Carra Patterson, and Adrienne Warren joined the cast. Production began in November 2021 in Pittsburgh. In December 2021, Jeffrey Wright, Grantham Coleman, Lilli Kay, Jordan-Amanda Hall, Jakeem Dante Powell, Ayana Workman, Jamilah Nadege Rosemond, Jules Latimer, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper, Frank Harts and Kevin Mambo joined the cast. Principal photography ended in Washington, D.C. in August, 2022.

Lenny Kravitz wrote and performed an original song, "Road to Freedom," for the film. On approaching Kravitz for writing a song for the film, Wolfe said, "The one note I gave him was the song needed to help deliver us as an audience, from feeling to action. And trombones. I begged for trombones." Wolfe became fascinated with trombones after filming Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), and Trombone Shorty was brought on board to contribute to the song.

Release
Rustin premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2023. It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2023. Michelle and Barack Obama introduced the film at the opening night of the HBCU First Look Film Festival at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The film was released in select theaters on November 3, 2023 and premiered worldwide on Netflix on November 17.

Critical response


Domingo garnered much critical acclaim for his performance in the title role. John Anderson of The Wall Street Journal commended Domingo as a "force of nature in this film, delivering a complex, highly sympathetic portrayal" that "determines what the movie actually is, while preventing it from going awry." Maureen Lee Lenker elaborated, in her review for Entertainment Weekly, that "Domingo infuses Rustin with a warmth and vibrancy that creates a performance of immense empathy" and followed this by stating "his portrait of a man fighting for both his race and his sexuality feels incredibly personal and helps hammer home Rustin's commitment to true 'justice for all.'" The Guardian's Benjamin Lee appreciated the film's intersectional coverage of Rustin's struggles and concluded that Domingo "nails the charming persuasiveness that would explain how Rustin achieved so much in such a short amount of time and as he slowly starts to experience a level of acceptance for his whole self, rather than handpicked parts, there’s a genuine poignancy to watching him crumble in front of us, a weight we can feel being lifted away.

Other critics were more lukewarm towards the film, in particular for its screenplay and direction. Bilge Ebiri from Vulture observed that the script was laden with "ham-handed stage-setting with lines" that equated to "classroom-exercise level writing", leading to a film that was "filled with all the clichés of the genre." He also elaborates that the film's "predictable plot points" and the "pro forma" nature of Rustin's "personal affairs" in conjunction with Wolfe's "methodical direction" led to "visual inertia". RogerEbert.com's Robert Daniels similarly agreed that the film suffocated Domingo and suppressed his potential, noting that he "ultimately clings to these emotional crescendos, gripping for dear life to a film that rarely, if ever, rises to his level." In his review, Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post found the film's "perfunctory plot" to be "as montage-y and as superficial as the film’s opening reenactments" and criticized the lack of character development across the supporting cast, noting "none of them stands out as a three-dimensional character".

Specific criticism was further directed towards the film's approach of Rustin's sexuality as a narrative. Dustin Guastela of Jacobin criticized the film for caricaturing Rustin's political views: "Rustin claims the civil rights hero has been forgotten because of his sexuality. But it was his fiery and provocative class politics that makes him both controversial and prophetic today." He argues that the film's lack of development in the relationship between Rustin and Tom Kahn "weaponized" Rustin's sexuality as a means to obscure that Rustin's "historical neglect" was also due, in part, to his political views, which were "no less a reason for his official erasure from canonical civil rights history." In his review for IndieWire, David Ehrlich also lamented the film's handling of Rustin's sexuality and stated that "Rustin is diminished by the forced momentum of its plotting, by how inelegantly the script incorporates the social dynamics of Rustin’s homosexuality (the love triangle that develops between Rustin, fellow activist Tom Kahn, and a composite character played by Johnny Ramey stops the movie dead in its tracks every time it comes up)."