'John Lewis: Good Trouble'
What makes an American hero? At no time in my life has that question been grappled with by so many than in this moment. Well, if you’re looking to start a new list, you might as well begin with John Lewis.
The Georgia congressman and Civil Rights hero is the subject of a new documentary, John Lewis: Good Trouble, and, to be honest, if the story it tells were about almost any other famous person or political leader of note, I would be inclined to write it off as mindless, unquestioning hagiography.
As a piece of documentary filmmaking, John Lewis: Good Trouble is quite conventional. Lewis’ moral compass, leadership and resolve has put him at the center of historic moments for more than 50 years. As a young man, he was among those brutally beaten by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. as he attempted to lead a march to Montgomery to register black voters. His skull was fractured that day - Bloody Sunday - and he has been in the spotlight ever since, from his push to renew the Voting Rights Act in the early 2000s, to his sponsorship of legislation to create the National Museum of African American History and Culture, to a string of more recent stands against the Trump administration.
That kind of biography - lengthy and often with cameras rolling - comfortably lends itself to a familiar documentary style. Black-and-white clips of sit-ins in Nashville and the Selma-to-Montgomery march are interspersed with interviews of people who inspired Lewis (Rev. James Lawson) and who he has inspired (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Elijah Cummins, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and so on) as well as modern-day footage of Lewis delivering stump speeches and journeying back to places from his childhood.
And, you know, that’s a perfect fit when the story is as good as John Lewis’ is. Were his life story less momentous - were he less deserving of such celebration - the structure and format of director Dawn Porter’s film might weigh it down. What it ends up being is an urgent ode to what America and Americans can be at their determined best.
Lewis is very sick now, at a moment when we could all probably use his voice and his leadership in the streets, helping us make sense of what kind of “good trouble” we should all be making to get us through these times. He announced at the end of last year that he had stage IV pancreatic cancer. I am not an oncologist, but I do know that’s not a good prognosis.
Far too many people Lewis’ age and with his life experiences have been lost as the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified. Watching this documentary, I was at once grateful that it exists and saddened by the realization that so many of the ties to this history - to the history of John Lewis’ life - have been prematurely severed in recent months.
Lewis, a slight man with a slight voice somehow still capable of summoning a preacher’s power and cadence, grew up picking cotton in the fields of Troy, Ala. He walked and talked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. To hear him speak about non-violent protest is to understand its radical power. Sometime soon, he will be gone. We will have many things to remember him by. Thankfully, that includes this film.