Helga without the H

Every year* I attempt (with varying degrees of success and effort) to watch as many of that year’s Oscar nominees as possible. For the past few years* I’ve posted reviews of these movies here on this blog. At some point before the awards ceremony, I usually write up some sort of over-analysis and maybe some predictions, but we’ll see if I run out of steam before then. In the meantime, today we cover…

*Except 2022, when I was too burned out from 2021’s binge to give a crap.

Rustin

[1 nominations for best actor (Colman Domingo)]

IS IT SALTBURN? No.

Rustin isn’t exactly a mind-blowing piece of filmmaking. Thankfully nobody is making this claim; the film’s sole nomination is a well-deserved best actor nomination for its lead, Colman Domingo. (BTW Colman was good and he would deserve a win if he got it.) What’s a little confusing to me is how similar this film is to others that did get more Oscar attention in their respective years, without receiving similar acclaim. There have been pretty similar movies, but nobody seemed too excited about this one for some reason. The general consensus I noticed in the few pro reviews I perused basically said, “This is a good history lesson, but not a great movie.” I’d say that’s pretty much right.

I do not think this is a bad movie, though. It was totally fine. I thought it did exactly what it was supposed to do; it told an engaging bit of history that has been swept way under the rug. At times the inspirational speeches and montages got a bit cheesy or contrived, but they got the message across. I, for one, knew exactly nothing about Rustin going into this film, so I very much appreciated the opportunity to learn. That being said, this movie isn’t really about him. Meaning, it’s not a biopic. Instead, it’s the story of one particular moment in his life (the year he organized the March), with references to his previous life experiences to give us a sense of who he is. I am interesting in learning a bit more about Rustin, but, honestly, I am glad that this film didn’t focus on him directly. I’m glad we took this narrow focus. A regular biopic might be too formulaic.

Or maybe I’m biased. Because, honestly, while Rustin himself was interesting, I personally was more interested in something else in this film.

The nature of awards and nominations is that we wind up comparing movies to one another. I should be comparing it to all the other biopics with nominations this year (Nyan, Maestro, Oppenheimer.) I should be comparing it to other films with best actor nominations. I should be comparing it to other films about hidden history (Killers of the Flower Moon), or other Oscar-nominated civil rights films (Selma). But the truth is, the main movie to which I am comparing this film is…

Netflix’s Fyre Festival documentary. Or any documentary about Fyre Festival. Or any documentary about any failed festival. Honestly, I just cannot get enough of learning about people who can’t pull off an event to save their lives. Rustin is the polar opposite. My favorite parts of the film were any/all scenes that explained the massive effort that went into the organizational details. I have a personal reason for being into this stuff; in 2017 I was on the organizing committee for a pretty big song and dance festival. It took over every moment of my life for 1.5 years. The insane amount of details that go into organizing any sort of large-scale event is mind-blowing, and every single time that a big event goes off remotely ok, it’s a minor miracle. In other words, those organizers all deserve mad props. And that’s what I loved about this film. My little event involved around 4,000 attendees. The March on Washington had 250,000! We had the internet and a nice website; they did not. We had flush toilets at all of our venues; they had to arrange port-a-potties. We only had to bus people 2 miles; they had to bus people from every corner of the US. We had to juggle 5 hotel blocks; they had to juggle- well, frankly, I have zero idea where everyone slept (though I did learn that tents were considered.)

My favorite scene is also one of the least realistic, but dang was it fun. At a meeting, someone expresses skepticism at Rustin being involved with the March, because he could bring bad publicity (because he was gay, which was considered a big no-no at the time.) Rustin starts asking volunteers around the room about every single little details of organization. “How many buses do we have?” “How many peace officers working security?” Etc. I don’t remember the exact details. He does on like this for a couple minutes, and at the end he says something to the effect of “This is why I am here and you will not fire me.” Basically, pulling off logistics at this scale require a very special kind of person, and Rustin was that person.

Bottom line, I know we’re supposed to come away respecting Rustin for a ton of totally legit and incredible reasons. We should be grateful to him for his work in the civil rights movement. We should respect his bravery for being openly gay at a time when doing so was dangerous. Etc. And I do very much come away respecting him for all of those things. But I think we should also all pause and appreciate the Master of Logistics. Because without organized people like Rustin at the helm, you wind up with shitshows like the Fyre Festival. And I think we can all agree that the March on Washington was too dang important to leave in the hands of anyone less capable.