Can't Stay, Can't Go: What Is History to a Cinematic Imagination?

Michael Roemer and Robert Young's fictional drama Nothing But a Man makes America's civil rights history intelligible for contemporary audiences. Young's photography relies less on wide observational, contextual angles than on close, "myopic" framing of the face. The political conflicts represented in the film are rendered as highly personal ones between neighbors, friends, and family members who face off in a cauldron heated by historical forces.