The Loving Story (2011) User Reviews

Wonderful Documentary Made Primarily from Old Archival Materials

[rbsteury · 9/10 · 30 July 2011]

I just saw "The Loving Story" this afternoon at the Traverse City Film Festival. The film is moving and inspirational, illustrating that sometimes even poor and minimally educated people can obtain justice within our court system. The story is straightforward and the ending is known, but the still photos and interview footage (some just recently discovered) of Richard and Mildred Loving shows a very genuine and touching relationship between them and their 3 children. Their quiet dignity in the face of racist laws and attitudes is inspirational. The ACLU once again is shown to be a force for justice to which people without money or power can turn.

We were not lucky enough to have the Loving's daughter Peggy present (as was the case for aegriffin at Tribeca) but the director and writers Nancy Buirski and Susie Ruth Powell were here for a Q&A. Their story of how this documentary came to be is entertaining and emotional. The idea that this film should have been used (as suggested by another reviewer) as an "opportunity to investigate the legal process" leaves me puzzled. Unless one is an attorney, the film presents as much about the legal process as one would reasonably want to know. It is not a legal treatise, but rather a story of a couple in love who would not back down from what is right, and an affirmation that the US legal system can (in time) bring about a just outcome on some occasions.

Everyone I saw it with gave this documentary their highest rating. You will not regret the time spent viewing this heart-warming slice of civil rights history. Kudos to Ms. Buirski & Powell.

And Ms. Buirski did mention that the documentary will be shown on HBO in February 2012. I certainly plan to watch it again at that time. 9/10

Excellent documentary

[cruhl32 · 9/10 · 2 March 2015]

The love these two people had for one another was genuinely real, and watching them and their beautiful children in the archival footage tugged at your heartstrings. I watched this documentary when it was first shown on HBO, and thought it was engrossing. I was 20 yrs. old when this case was finally decided, and I remember it vaguely. I lived in the North and had known that interracial marriage was illegal in the South, but never realized that couples were actually persecuted and jailed as the Loving couple were. The young ACLU lawyers who took the case are shown interacting with the couple in the l960's, and they also add present day commentary.

This is not meant to be a documentary about the legal machinations of the case (altho some of that is explained); but It's a compelling story about the human aspects of the case.

Compelling but flawed.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 30 June 2013]

This HBO documentary is about a famous case that went to the Supreme Court back in the 1960s. It seems that Mr. and Mrs. Loving were different races and, believe it or not, back in 1958 when they married, such a mixed marriage was illegal in almost half the states in the US! The story about Mr. and Mrs. Loving is very, very compelling. You can't help but be pulled into the film because they were so wronged by the state of Virginia. And, I loved the movie dramatization about them ("Mrs. and Mrs. Loving"). However, "The Loving Story" is good but flawed--mostly because the folks at HBO forgot to caption the film. While this always irritates me (since my daughter is deaf and I am somewhat hard of hearing), it's more of a problem here because many of the clips used were old and heavily accented--and many folks would struggle to understand all of this. Being a Southern American would make understanding the accents easier. Overall, well worth seeing--but a bit flawed due to sound issues.

Moving Documentary About the Wills of Two Brave (and Eponymously Named) Souls Who Helped Change American Life

[alicegriffin · 29 April 2011]

This documentary is about the 1967 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case striking down anti-miscegenation statutes as unenforceable under the Fourteenth Amendment.

I read about Loving v. Virginia in law school and marveled at the bravery of the couple in question (a white man and black woman) who were prosecuted for leaving their home state of Virginia to marry in D.C. and then returning to Virginia where they were harassed by law enforcement and ultimately prosecuted as felons for miscegenation.

The documentary (which consists almost entirely of contemporaneous black and white footage) offers (and needs) little narration as the Lovings and their attorneys describe the events that led to the historical legal ruling.

While interracial marriage attracts little notice in most populous areas of America today, at the time the Lovings were prosecuted (1958) 21 states had anti-miscegenation statutes on their books. (Indeed, notwithstanding the 1967 decision, the last state to repeal its anti-miscegenation law was Alabama in 2000.) I saw the film at the Tribeca Film Festival tonight and as a wonderful bonus, the Lovings' youngest child, Peggy Loving Fortune, appeared and shared her personal feelings and recollections. (Her parents are deceased; Mrs. Mildred Jeter Loving died of pneumonia in 2008, and Mr. Richard Loving died in a automobile accident in 1975.) The film was made in part by HBO, so perhaps HBO will air it at some point.

Loving Brings Hatred and Bigotry to the Forefront ****

[edwagreen · 10/10 · 19 February 2012]

Outstanding documentary showing that racially restrictive laws come from absolute lunatics citing the bible and other references to spew their hate. Remember, we have only to look at the racial laws of Nazi Germany in the 1930s to see what a vicious thing can be done to innocent people.

That the Lovings had to first depend on the state courts to resolve the issue was ridiculous. Anyone knew that this case would ultimately end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The documentary excels because it deals with plain ordinary people caught up in such turbulence during a period that would redefine the civil rights movement in America.

What the law was essentially saying was where such a couple could and could not live. It is frightening that Alabama finally ended its misogyny laws in 2011.

A tale of racial bigotry at its worst with Richard and Mildred Loving as trailblazers.

If Lovin' You is Wrong...

[gbkmmaurstad · 8/10 · 8 October 2017]

Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred (Ruth Negga) fall in love and want to get married when Mildred finds out she's pregnant. It's 1958 in Carolin County, Virginia and interracial marriages are illegal. They drive to Washington, D.C. to get married where it is legal and return to Virginia. The state does not recognize the marriage and they are arrested. The Lovings story and their legal case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court and becomes a landmark case in marriage laws.

This is a movie everyone should see, it's a reminder to us all how different and difficult life was for a large part of the population or for those who did not follow societal laws.

"Tell them I love my wife"

[boblipton · 7/10 · 1 December 2023]

Nancy Buirski's first documentary concerns itself with the case of Loving v. Virginia.

Perhaps it might more accurately be called the story of how Richard and Mildred Loving wanted to live out their married life in Virginia. Ms. Buirski begins her discussion with consideration of the society and laws of the time as if she were talking about a place and time the audience has never heard of. To people my age it may seem ridiculous; barely more than 40 years had elapsed between the Supreme Court decision and the release of this film. Yet my nieces, on discovering their maternal grandmother had left Virginia in the 1950s to pass as White don't understand why she never told them.

Such is the lack of historical context people live in, a sort of moment which people imagine always existed. That's the reason and need for movies like this.

the loving story

[mossgrymk · 10/10 · 14 December 2023]

The lengths to which some people will go to avoid living in DC, huh? All joking aside, though, this is a great documentary. I like how director Nancy Buirski is able to strike a balance between giving a legal treatise and telling a personal story, without one overpowering the other. Through her fine work various heroes emerge, both legal...the two dogged ACLU attorneys and Earl Warren being the biggest examples...and personal...the title characters, of course, two ordinary folks with an extraordinary amount of determination not to let the state of Virginia push them around because of their race. And there are villains, like the racist sheriff who rousts the Lovings at four in the morning and arrests them for the heinous crime of marriage and the even more racist local judge who invokes scripture in his legal opinion to invalidate their union. However, this is a tale of justice prevailing, albeit slowly (sound familiar to all you Trump Delay fans out there?), and Buirski wisely and properly, in my opinion, does not let the bad guys upstage the Lovings or their advocates. Give it an A.

Better document than documentary

[parkerbcn · 6/10 · 29 April 2021]

A classic example of an excellent document (the story of a persecuted mixed-race married couple in the 50s that went all the way to the US Supreme Court and finally changed the laws) in a not so excellent documentary. While the story and the characters are very compelling, the documentary seems to drag out for some periods and it looks more like an easy made for TV documentary than a true artistic reflexion.

One of many important Civil Rights battles

[view_and_review · 9/10 · 4 January 2022]

The racism and the Jim Crow laws that existed were so encompassing that they applied to things you may have never thought about. It makes me wonder how many laws were removed from the books with the Civil Rights movement. And they talk about government needing to be smaller.

"The Loving Story" is about Richard Perry Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter Loving, a Black woman, who violated Virginia's miscegenation laws when they married. On June 2, 1958 the two got married in Washington D. C. and went back home to Virginia. On July 14th a sheriff entered their home at 4 a.m. And arrested them. They were sentenced to a year in prison, but the judge suspended the sentence with the condition that they leave Virginia. They were banished for nine years before the U. S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction which allowed them to legally return home as a couple.

"The Loving Story" is mostly footage from the 1960's while the case was actively being argued. There are a few present day interviews, but most of the interviews were from about 60 years ago. If I thought about it, then it would make sense to me that the South would have anti-miscegenation laws, but when you don't operate with that mindset, you wouldn't fathom it. "The Loving Story" is just one more important battle waged and won during the fight for civil rights back in the 60's.

This is one of the most boring documentaries I have seen.

[dukecr_94611 · 3/10 · 26 March 2013]

The Lovings were plaintiffs in an interesting & important case involving interracial marriage that,in the end, went to the US Supreme Court and changed history. Unfortunately, HBO has taken this story and made a terrible documentary of their story and the case. Actual footage of the Lovings and those in their story is used throughout the movie These are "home movies" in the worst sense - nothing much happens, the sound is terrible and it appears the movie makers insisted on using EVERY scrap of this footage, unedited and regardless of whether something was happening or not. There is no narration and this footage is left to "tell the story" along with a few segments of comments from today by the ACLU lawyers and Lovings' daughter. The Problem is that the way "the story unfolds" thru the footage is SLOW, boring, drawn out and irritating experience to watch. For years, I have been interested in the Lovings' case and their story. I have seen a TV movie about them and their case. I was interested to see actual footage of the real people during their ordeal - but after 5 or ten minutes i was truly bored What a wasted opportunity to make an important and great documentary

Not a compelling interpretation

[soher529 · 3/10 · 27 April 2011]

We have all been disturbed by the racial discrimination in the 50's and 60's (as we continue to be disturbed about discrimination today) and this movie did not educate us to any of the many nuances that could have made this an interesting compelling movie. There was nothing that set it apart from documentaries, about the same subject, that have preceded it. Sadly, the opportunity to investigate the legal process was glossed over. The movie took the easy way out by relying on archived home movies to tell the story. An investigation of the attorneys and their process in this case would have been enlightening, informative and infinitely more interesting. An important story to tell was unfortunately told in an uninteresting way. Very disappointing.

Entertaining Documentary

[Michael_Elliott · 20 February 2017]

The Loving Story (2011)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Richard and Mildred Loving were simple folks from Virginia who found themselves in jail and forced to move out of the state. All of this was due to him being a white man and her being a black woman, which at the time was against the law. This documentary covers this period in their life as well as the Supreme Court ruling, which would change history.

This story was turned into a motion picture in 2016 and while that film was quite good, this documentary is certainly the better of the two. What makes this one here so interesting is that we get interviews with some of the police that arrested the Loving's as well as interviews with the lawyers who took their case to the Supreme Court. We also get interviews with the Loving family, which were recorded as all of this was actually going on.

If you're interested in the subject then there's no question that you'll be entertained by this documentary. The filmmakers did a very good job at explaining what the laws were at the time as well as the entire process of getting the case to the Supreme Court. The interviews with the original lawyers was certainly a major plus as were the archival interviews with the Loving family.