Loving is a 2016 biographical romantic drama film written and directed by Jeff Nichols about Richard and Mildred Loving, the plaintiffs in the 1967 US case (the Warren Court) decision Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. It is inspired by the 2011 documentary The Loving Story by Nancy Buirski. Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton co-star as Mildred and Richard Loving with Marton Csokas, Nick Kroll, and Michael Shannon.
The film had a limited release in the United States on November 4, 2016, before a wide release on November 11, 2016. The film received positive reviews, with praise for its acting, Nichols' directing and writing, the film's faithfulness, and was named one of the best films of 2016 by several media outlets. The film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for numerous awards, including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor for Edgerton and Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Negga.
Plot Richard Loving, a white construction worker in Caroline County, Virginia, falls in love with a local black woman and family friend, Mildred Jeter. Upon Mildred discovering that she is pregnant, they decide to marry. Knowing that interracial marriage violates Virginia's anti-miscegenation laws, they drive to Washington, D.C., to get married in 1958. Richard makes plans to build a house for Mildred less than a mile from her family home.
Soon afterward, sheriff's deputies raid Mildred's home and arrest the Lovings. When Richard points to the marriage license, Sheriff Brooks curtly tells him that it has no validity in Virginia and hauls them both to jail. They plead guilty to breaking the anti-miscegenation law and are sentenced to one year in prison. However, the judge suspends the sentence, provided that they do not return to Virginia together for at least 25 years. The Lovings move to Washington to stay with a friend of Mildred. They briefly return to Caroline County so their first child, Sidney, can be delivered by Richard's mother, a midwife. Arrested again, they are cleared when their lawyer informs the judge he erroneously advised them to return.
Mildred and Richard have two other children together, Donald and Peggy. However, Mildred grows frustrated by being away from the country, and her frustration grows when she watches the March on Washington. She writes to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for help. Kennedy refers them to the American Civil Liberties Union. Lawyer Bernard S. Cohen takes the case and confers with constitutional law expert Phil Hirschkop. They conclude that the Lovings' ordeal has a good chance of going all the way to the Supreme Court – and overturning similar anti-miscegenation laws across the nation.
After a minor auto accident involving one of their children, the Lovings decide to slip back into Virginia, settling in a remote portion of King and Queen County, while their case moves through the courts. Their case gains wide attention, and is profiled in Life magazine by photographer Grey Villet. The state contends that people of different races were never intended to live together, and goes as far as to suggest the Lovings' children are bastards. The state Supreme Court refuses to set aside the Lovings' conviction. Undeterred, Cohen and Hirschkop appeal to the federal Supreme Court. Before going to Washington, Cohen asks Richard if he has a message for the justices. Richard replies, "Tell the judge I love my wife."
Several weeks later, the Supreme Court unanimously holds that laws prohibiting interracial marriage are unconstitutional. The Lovings return to Caroline County and resume construction on their dream house. An epilogue reveals Richard died in a car accident seven years later; Mildred never remarried and continued living in the house Richard built for her until her death in 2008.
Cast Joel Edgerton as Richard Loving: a taciturn, white Virginian bricklayer, and the husband of Mildred. On the character of Richard, Nichols stated, "[Richard] speaks in a clipped manner, then it's the way he holds his head in front of the rest of the body, how self-conscious he seemed in front of the camera. He'd laugh and quickly cover his lips over his [tobacco-stained] teeth. He's a bricklayer ... they're hunched over all day long, and they turn their bodies into these assembly lines for laying brick. What I gave [Edgerton], in terms of coherent character on the page, he added specificity." When describing Richard, Edgerton stated that he "... was a quiet hero, and sometimes quiet dignity speaks louder than the typical movie hero who's all too eager to fight." He spoke of some of the challenges in portraying Richard, such as the Virginian accent, in which he stated, "The importance of the story itself, not to treat it with kid gloves but to maintain a reverence for the truth, for the responsibility we felt toward these real people. And conveying so much with so few words was one of the biggest challenges." To capture the physical quality of Richard, Edgerton bleached his hair, adopted a receding hairline, and wore prosthetic teeth. He spoke of the influences in Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line (1988), recommended by Nichols, which assisted in his finding of Richard's accent. He was drawn to Nichols' version of the character, as according to him he was: "just shut down and emasculated and weathered by this situation" while Edgerton noted the version was keeping more in line with the man in Buirski's The Loving Story (2011). Both Nichols and Edgerton felt the main challenge of bringing Richard to the screen was the question of where he fell on the intellectual spectrum, as Richard was not well educated nor naturally gifted, and may not have understood the case's complexities or its social ramifications, with both actor and director holding conversations on the subject. Edgerton spoke of Richard, the difficulty in holding an accent with a taciturn approach, while referring to roles of the past: "With a character like John Connolly of Black Mass (2015), you really get to fly on the rhythm of an accent, and the rhythm is so much a part of what an accent is. When you don't have much to say, it's hard to latch onto that cadence." Edgerton also involved himself in bricklaying to prepare for the role, and while speaking of his experience he remarked that he began to fully understand Richard's posture: "Suddenly it made sense because of the mechanics of his work ... Here was a man who looked awkward in his own body because he was so used to conserving energy. A man who slumped because he spent his days hunched over a pile of bricks." In an interview with People, Edgerton spoke of Richard and Mildred's daughter Peggy: "Peggy is as shy as her father and we were really just hoping for her acceptance and her blessing, which I think we got. One day on set she called me 'Daddy' and it was like the greatest blessing I've ever had." Ruth Negga as Mildred Loving: a sweet, soft-spoken young woman of black and Native American ancestry, whose marriage to Richard violated the state's anti-miscegenation law. During 2013, while preparing for Midnight Special, casting director Francine Maisler suggested Negga to Jeff Nichols and Sarah Green. Negga was the first person director Nichols auditioned for the role and he revealed that he thought she was too petite when he first met her, but her acting abilities changed his mind, wherein he stated, "She spoke in Mildred's voice. She held her mouth like Mildred ... I wasn't looking for star power. I was looking for great actors." After she successfully auditioned for the role of Mildred, Nichols sent Negga excerpts of his yet-to-be-finished screenplay and a copy of Nancy Buirski's The Loving Story (2011). Of Negga's audition, Nichols stated, "Ruth had the voice, she had the posture, the facial expressions. It wasn't until after we were done and I started to speak with her that I realized she had an Irish accent ... She was Mildred. When she left the room I turned to [Green] and [Maisler] and said, 'Well, do we really have to see anyone else?'" On what attracted her to Nichols' film, and the part of Mildred, Negga stated, "I've never seen that kind of story told in this manner before. You know, the screenplay is so beautiful and I wanted very much to be part of that. Having become familiar with them, I think their story needs to be told and shared and honored and celebrated." On the character of Mildred, Negga stated, "Mildred was the spine of the couple. She saw what maybe Richard didn't want to see, that they weren't going to get out of this by running away or putting their heads in the sand. She was a very astute woman. After those five days in jail, she realized that the fairy tale was over." Negga spoke of the personal connection she felt to the Lovings' story, because of her own background as a mixed-race person. Nichols invited Negga and Edgerton to Virginia for two weeks to visit the various locations, do prep work, and visit special places related to Richard and Mildred, two weeks prior to post-production. Negga deeply identified with Mildred's sense of connection to a place, with her drawing comparisons to Limerick, Ireland and Richmond, Virginia, by her stating that: "Virginia isn't that different from Ireland ... Land and home and community are super important. When I was playing her, I tried to imagine I couldn't go home again because of whom I married. It must have drained the lifeblood from her." On the unassuming couple, Negga stated, "They were poor, relatively uneducated. Mildred was a bit more educated than he was, but I think everyone else underestimated their tenacity, their belief in themselves, their love for each other, and their respect for each other." In an interview with The Boston Globe, Negga spoke of having "already been gifted, personally" by playing Mildred and getting to know her surviving family, to which she later remarked, "She's my hero. But what's important is that people are coming out of this movie genuinely moved because what they see is kindness. In many ways, [Mildred] would have been uncomfortable [by the attention] but their legacy is important ... I think schoolchildren will know their names."