TELLURIDE – Every year, almost without fail, there is an American hero, somehow lost to history, who finally gets their moment on the big screen. This year’s honoree is Bayard Rustin, a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement who was a primary organizer for the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The fact his voice has been passionately portrayed by an actor as talented as Colman Domingo and his story will now stream to a global audience via Netflix is perhaps the most rewarding aspects of George C. Wolfe’s “Rustin,” which debuted at this year’s Telluride Film Festival. The rest may leave you wanting.
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It’s genuinely disheartening that a man who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 by Barack Obama (an executive producer on the film) wouldn’t be as well-known as some of his contemporaries in the Civil Rights movement let alone as a consequential figure in LGBTQ+ history. And, trust, the film is not ignorant of this fact. A screenplay credited to Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black makes it quite clear that Rustin’s frankness over his sexuality was a primary reason he was pushed to the background. Yet, as the movie demonstrates, Ruskin was the public face of the March in the weeks before it took place. He was a target from all sides including those in the Civil Rights Movement who also wanted to scuttle the event. He was even vilified on multiple occasions on the floor of the United States Senate by infamously racist Senator Strom Thurmond. In a last ditch effort to shame him away, the Senator submitted the activist’s 1953 arrest for “sex perversion” to the Congressional record. It made newspaper headlines and radio reports, but it didn’t work.
A veteran of numerous civil rights campaigns for more than four decades, “Rustin” the movie is almost completely focused on the hoops he jumped through to get the Washington event off the ground. There is a key moment a few years prior that influenced that fight, however. A friend and adviser of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Aml Ameen) since 1956, the pair were planning a protest march at the 1960 Democratic National Convention to drive more attention to the cause. When New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (Jeffrey Wright, marvelously stealing every scene) discovers this, he threatens to leak to the press that the two men were having an affair. Despite this accusation being completely untrue, King cancels the march forcing Rustin to resign from his position in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in protest.
For the next few years, the movie depicts Rustin working for an Anti-War organization, but he is clearly frustrated being apart from the movement. He has a run in with some Malcom X supporters at a friend’s party and voices his concerns there are too many squabbling factions for the cause to duplicate the inroads it made in the 50s. He’s horrified by the tactics law enforcement are beginning to use on peaceful protests in the South. He wants to make a difference and, as always, history provides an opportunity.
In June 1963, President John F. Kennedy announces his plans to send the Civil Rights Act to Congress that fall. It was a landmark legislative package that Southern politicians in Kennedy’s own party were not happy about. Less than 24 hours later, Medgar Evers (Rashad Demond Edwards), an important activist in Mississippi, is assassinated. In the movie, these events spur Rustin into a late-night brainstorm for a two-day March on Washington, an event that will send peaceful protesters in every Congressional office and surround the White House (an eventual compromise trims it to one day and limits its scope to just the steps of the Lincoln Memorial). The NCAA and its Executive Director Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock, honestly not great) are absolutely against the march not only because they think it will fail, but Rustin’s involvement. Again, in the movie, the march is saved by another civil rights leader, A. Philip Randolph (Glynn Turman, always good), who comes to Rustin’s aid to support it.
But no.
Now, you can easily go online and read up on the march and discover that Randolph and Rustin had been planning the event since December 1961. It wasn’t just a spur of the moment inspiration. We’re not sure why that couldn’t fit into the screenplay, but it’s not the only part of the film where history has been changed for dramatic purposes. 
Thankfully, and intentionally, Rustin’s gay life is celebrated. And how could it not be? He was pretty out for the time. It’s also well documented he had a private on and off relationship with a young civil rights organizer, Tom Kahn (Gus Harper), who also acted as his live-in assistant when the march planning ramps up into high gear. Because the writers somehow thought the movie needed a semi-love triangle (it doesn’t), Ruskin finds himself wrapped up in an affair with Elias (Johnny Ramey), a married pastor from the South working temporarily for the NAACP in New York. Rustin opens up new worlds to the closeted preacher (a composite character) and Tom can’t help but notice the chemistry between the two. Frustratingly, the Elias storyline feels like its pulled from another movie. We love the representation and the depiction of the difficulties in being somewhat “out” in the early 60s, but from a basic screenwriting perspective this storyline does nothing to Rustin’s arc and is too much of a distraction from the heart of Rustin’s story, his Civil Rights work. And, frankly, that’s where the movie has a sense of purpose and genuine energy.
It goes without saying that once the final go ahead was given, Rustin and his army of twentysomething activist organizers pulled of something of a miracle. In just eight weeks they recruited an impressive coalition that drew an estimated 250,000 marchers from all over the country. People took buses, trains and the UAW even flew some of their members. There is a reason it is regarded as a seminal event in American history. It mattered. And that’s why some of the choices Wolfe and his screenwriters make are so puzzling. 
With the grassroots team doing its thing, the power brokers continue to squabble over different aspects of the event. Granted, Wolfe is a multiple Tony Award-winning director and he’s at his best in this context. Especially when his actors are confronting each other across a table or in an enclosed room. Unfortunately, Wolfe builds up all the genuine fear, angst and hope in the weeks organizing the march to only have the event itself fall flat on screen. Something is missing. Perhaps a lot is missing. Maybe the real video of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech should have been used instead of Ameen’s recreation. Maybe the film’s depiction of the crowd isn’t as impressive as actual newsreel or television footage. Maybe the fact that Ruskin’s speech that day – yes, he spoke – isn’t included was a massive and head scratching mistake. 
The film’s saving grace, as you’d expect, is Domingo. He conveys Ruskin’s inherent natural charisma so perfectly so that no one will finish watching this film and wonder how such a flamboyant man became such a powerful figure in this homophobic era. Domingo’s performance makes you believe. Maybe that is enough of a tribute or, maybe, the fact the film just exists is enough. Because like all those other icons lost to history, Bayard Rustin certainly won’t be forgotten now. [C]
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