Mark Reviews Movies: JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 2, 2020

Congressman John Lewis, a member of the United States House of Representatives since 1987, sits down in a studio. Some makeup artists prepare him for the lights and the camera. He's used to this by now. Lewis has been in the public spotlight since his days in college. He was a civil rights activist at the height of the movement.

Talking about that work in the past tense isn't entirely accurate. He's still a civil rights activist as a member of Congress. There are the battles for equality under the law of then, and there are the battles today. John Lewis: Good Trouble sees them as a distinction, sadly, without much difference.

Director Dawn Porter's documentary isn't particularly novel in terms of its form (although there's at least one major exception, to be discussed later), but the film's narrative, which moves back and forth between Lewis' past as an activist and his present as a legislator (as well as a brief summary of how he went from one role to the other), more than makes up for it. It's a pretty straightforward biography, mixed with a fly-on-the-wall presentation of Lewis' political campaigning during the 2018 midterm election. That juxtaposition of the past and the present, though, makes a pretty clear point: It's almost too easy to compare Lewis' activism during the 1950s, '60s, and '70s with the issues of today. We've come a long way on the road of justice, but there are forces in this country that look with longing in the rearview mirror.

On the campaign trail, Lewis argues for the election of Stacey Abrams, a gubernatorial candidate in his home state of Georgia, and Beto O'Rourke, running for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, as well as others. Looking at a picture of the Texas candidate's opponent, Lewis says they got to get "this guy"—only "this guy"—out of office. There's a similar approach to the fact of the sitting president, who is never mentioned by name, almost as if—as we keep learning and re-learning and discovering new reasons to keep learning and re-learning—he doesn't deserve the attention and hasn't earned even a modicum of respect. The omission of the name is too obvious to not be intentional. Perhaps Porter didn't want to sully Lewis' story with even the mention of the guy.

Meanwhile, Lewis, who turned 80 this year, regales crowds in parks, in churches, and in banquet halls with stories of his youth, as a child wanting to become a minister and preaching to the chickens, and his activism. The people who have been accompanying him the whole time later jest about not knowing the chicken story, and Lewis, with an abundance of good humor and without missing a beat, just starts reciting the tale again.

The congressman is a bit of a star among members of that legislative body—looked up to by his peers, both contemporary and junior (although we only get one member of the opposing party to say nice things about him, which says more about the party than the man himself), and still leading acts of activism, such as when some legislators organized a sit-in on the floor of the House to protest a lack of action on reasonable firearm legislation. It's refreshing, though, to see that the man is as dedicated, hardworking, amiable, and motivated by a real desire for much-needed change as we'd hope from any politician.

In that studio, we get the film's real, unique quality. Porter interviews Lewis, obviously, as well as family members, who corroborate the man's good character and laugh about how busy he still is, and colleagues, who speak of him with the distinct smiling admiration that comes when a person is as down-to-earth as he or she is possesses a kind of legendary status. The documentary, by the way, was filmed before the announcement that Lewis was battling cancer, and the absence of that news or reactions to it maintains a sense of the man for what he has done and not for some uncertain future.

Most of the direct interviews, though, deal with the past, as Lewis recounts his history as a civil rights activist, working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and, particularly, the non-violent philosophy behind the movement. Porter's most ingenious touch in the film is to have footage of a younger Lewis on hand for the present-day Lewis to watch and to comment on it. "I've never seen this," he says at one point, and we can see his mind and memory at work, trying to put into words what the moment had to say and what decades of further experiences have to say about that moment.

The entire film, honestly, could have been that and, possibly, could have been even more informative and insightful. Just as with the story's back-and-forth from past to present, seeing Lewis at the time of the documentary's filming sitting in front of images of him as a younger man, though, re-asserts the film's central theme. In the past, Lewis and other civil rights activists were fighting for equality under the law—against segregation, police brutality, and voter suppression. During the 2018 midterms, a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision, striking down a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, is causing more and more voter disenfranchisement.

The main takeaway here is that's good we have Lewis to fight and, after him, we have those whom he has inspired to keep fighting. John Lewis: Good Trouble serves as a fine testimony of its subject's work and, more importantly, as a necessary reminder that the fight continues.

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