When we think of great Civil Rights leaders, Bayard Rustin is probably not a name that quickly comes to mind.
Despite a decades-long career in activism, including playing advisor to numerous important figures and helping to create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., Rustin’s efforts in the fight for equality were not widely known for some time – and for one very specific reason. In one of the opening scenes of the film “Rustin,” an irate Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (Jeffrey Wright) attempts to squash a protest Rustin and King have planned for Los Angeles.
“If they don’t call this sh-t off, the world will know the truth about Martin Luther King and his queen,” he growls. “And, baby, I do not mean Coretta.”
As a gay man, Rustin’s work during the Civil Rights era was relegated to the background, advising and planning, but never earning the recognition that his peers were privy to. “Rustin,” directed by George C. Wolfe, attempts to remedy that fact, focusing on Rustin’s role in planning the 1963 March on Washington. But despite its best intentions, “Rustin” doesn’t do justice to the life of the man at its center, too disjointed in its construction, settling for flash instead of depth.
The protest in Los Angeles does indeed fall apart when Congressman Powell threatens to leak rumors of an affair between King (Aml Ameen) and Rustin (Colman Domingo) to the press. The incident also causes a years-long rift between the former friends, who were once so close that King’s children called Rustin Uncle Bayard. The film begins with this schism and then moves back and forth between the truly monumental work Rustin did to organize the March on Washington as well as his interpersonal relationships with King, other Civil Rights leaders, and romantic partners.
The ruptured relationship between Rustin and King forms a central tension at the beginning of the story. Years after the break, the NAACP rejects Rustin’s idea for a large-scale march on the National Mall, leaving him with just one option – to get his former friend on his side. The first time the two men see each other again is one of the film’s more tender moments. When Rustin arrives, only Coretta (Carra Patterson) and the kids are home, and he begins leading them in an impromptu rendition of “This Little Light of Mine.” Considering the film’s overall theatricality, the moment should be too much, but it’s one of the few times the film doesn’t feel overly staged – funny, that an overtly performative moment would feel the most natural. King arrives in the middle of the song and watches from the background, overcome with the memory of what he’s been missing by having this person out of his life.
But “Rustin” can’t figure out the balancing act between the man’s personal and professional struggles. The two men leave this meeting with a truce, if a bit of a precarious one. Their relationship, however, is then ignored but for a few moments here and there, pushing all growth and tension to the side. “Rustin” juggles the audience from moment to moment, the screenplay (co-written by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black) picking its way through vignettes without showing us the threads of connectivity. Rustin’s love life suffers the most from this structure. He spends the film caught between the activist Tom Kahn and a married man named Elias Taylor (Gus Halper and Johnny Ramey, respectively). But there’s no real evolution to this love triangle. With no way to understand how the feelings between the three men ebb and flow, the audience is left adrift to the emotions at play until they’re suddenly pushed in their faces. There’s no subtext here, and it’s only when someone yells about how they’re feeling that you start to understand.
There are a few shining, quieter scenes throughout “Rustin” where the film allows itself and its performers to take a breath – Rustin watching King defend him on television is one of Domingo’s most captivating acting moments, one where you truly feel the break between the friends has mended. But more often than not, “Rustin” suffers from similar issues as Wolfe’s previous film “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” “Rustin” is not based on a play, but with its staginess and the sheer volume of monologues, you’d be forgiven for thinking it is. Domingo, who just earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance, can mostly get away with that amount of theatricality, and he is quite good at capturing the all-encompassing openness of the man he’s portraying. But painting an entire film in such broad strokes does nobody many favors.