Colman Domingo’s portrayal of Black civil rights hero “Rustin” is generating Oscar buzz

Out director George C. Wolfe’s highly anticipated biopic Rustin, arrives in theaters this weekend, ahead of its Netflix premiere on November 17. The film aims in part to correct a historical injustice: the sidelining and near erasure of out activist Bayard Rustin (played by Colman Domingo) from the public’s broader understanding of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Rustin was a key architect of the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of around 250,000 people. The film centers on the efforts to organize the momentous event. It also deals with the pushback and discrimination Rustin faced from other leaders in the movement because of his sexuality.

Related:

Out director George C. Wolfe calls gay Civil Rights icon Bayard Rustin “the ultimate American”

Wolfe spoke about his new biopic Rustin at the 2023 Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival earlier this month.

Even before the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Domingo was already considered a major Oscar contender, and critics have been singing his praises in reviews of the film.

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In his Variety review, critic Peter Debruge praised Rustin for expanding the history of the Civil Rights Movement to include Rustin in all his complexity and for its unapologetic depiction of his sexual and romantic life.

Wolfe brings “the same passion and conviction that defined its subject” to the film, Debruge writes, and screenwriters Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black have “crafted a compelling look at a lesser-known hero, presenting him not as a figure for sainthood, but as a well-rounded human being whose private life and flaws inform his identity and his accomplishments.”

Associated Press critic Mark Kennedy called the film “winning” and “triumphant.” Domingo, he writes, “is debonair, frisky, droll, passionate and utterly captivating as Rustin — the film representing the electric meeting of winning material with the perfect performer.” He also praised the entire, star-studded cast, as well as Wolfe for keeping Rustin intriguing by infusing the film’s depiction of the efforts to organize the March on Washington with a caper-like energy.

“Colman Domingo portrays Rustin with eccentric bombast, a firecracker wit, and a tender longing that is extremely entertaining,” writes AV Club’s Leigh Monson. “The film effectively communicates Rustin’s leadership genius, as well as the hostility he faced from his supposed allies in the NAACP and from other Black leaders.” However, Monson criticized its examination of Rustin as a gay man, writing that the film “fails to mine any substantive analysis of Rustin’s psyche beyond his desired sexual freedom.”

Similarly, critic Maureen Lee Lenker writes for Entertainment Weekly that Domingo’s “tremendous” performance is likely to “put him decisively into the Oscar race.” But she describes the film as “a paint-by-numbers biopic” that “swings between being an overstuffed historical fact sheet and barely toeing the line of sentimental inspiration.”

The Los Angeles Times’ Glenn Whipp also described Rustin as a “by-the-numbers biopic,” wondering if its subject’s “tumultuous life have been conveyed with a little more messiness, a little less restraint?” Still, he writes that Domingo steals every scene he’s in, and speculates that Rustin himself would have liked the film.

“In our current time where division can foster apathy and despair,” Whipp writes, “Rustin is a movie about possibility. You want to change the world? Gather some like-minded souls, roll up your sleeves, and dream. It might, this optimistic film posits, come true.”

Writing for The Daily Beast, Nick Schager called the film “stirring…at once urgent, rousing, and alive.” Domingo, he writes, inhabits the character “with charismatic fullness,” delivering Rustin’s speeches “with magnetic intensity and sincerity.” Rustin, Schager writes, “is ultimately the tale of a trailblazer who refused to back down in the fight for social justice — even when it cost him a seat at the table or his moment at center stage. It’s a reverential and touching tribute, and a sterling showcase for Domingo that may earn him his own forthcoming moment in the cinematic spotlight.”

President Barack Obama posthumously honored Rustin with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. “As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights,” Obama said when conferring the honor.

In February 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) pardoned Rustin for his 1953 “sex perversion” conviction which led to his being separated from his visible role as Martin Luther King Jr.’s right-hand man.