Ava DuVernay's '14th' Wants to Make the Constitution Feel Alive
Variety's review of '14th' says the film exerts the same kind of historical and topical force as '13th', and the specific claim is about tone as much as argument. The review's point is that the film cuts through the dusty complacency with which the Constitution tends to be regarded — the way merely hearing the word can make you feel like you're back in school — and presents it instead as a living, breathing document that we fail to heed at our peril. The interesting part isn't the subject; it's the claim that a mainstream, accessible register and real historical nuance are not a trade-off here.
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The trap in a film about a constitutional amendment is reverence. The review's praise is that this one refuses the classroom: it treats the document as something contested rather than settled, which is a harder and more interesting register to hold for two hours.
Refusing reverence isn't the same as being neutral. Calling the Constitution a living, breathing document is an argument with consequences, not a description — the film may be taking a side while sounding like it is simply explaining.
Perhaps, but the alternative is pretending the text is finished and settled, which is the complacency the review is describing. A film that makes the Constitution feel like something we are still arguing over is at least honest about what a constitution is for.