“Good Trouble” Makes a Portrait of a Change Agent

John Lewis’ life was too complex for any one movie — or book — to encompass it all. Dawn Porter’s 2020 documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble is a worthy but sketchy attempt to summarize the late Georgia representative and civil rights leader in 98 minutes. The structure is loose and non-linear, so those looking for a straight narrative of Lewis’ remarkable life and achievements may be disappointed.

What we do see is worthy, if uneven. Roughly half the screen time consists of footage that follows Lewis around in what proved to be the last year or two of his life, campaigning for Democratic candidates, visiting his family. We see some clues about why his life took the path it did, even in such mundane moments as when he pets some family chickens, but the overall context is lacking.

What context there is comes from a somewhat random shuffle of archival footage, including the very (in)famous confrontation on March 7, 1965, in Selma, Ala., when police violently attacked peaceful civil rights marchers at the Edmund Pettis Bridge.  Lewis, the man in the trench coat, the one knocked to the ground so violently his backpack flies off, makes one of the 20th century’s most iconic images. He suffered a fractured skull that day.

This was not the only time Lewis risked his life to make “good trouble,” as he often described his work as a non-violent change agent, both inside and outside the system. He was one of the first freedom riders in 1961. He organized one of the first sit-in’s, in Nashville, Tenn., in 1960. He helped organize the March on Washington in 1964 and was one of the day’s featured speakers, sharing the stage with the much more celebrated speech from Martin Luther King Jr.

Later, Lewis moved inside the system he sought to change by running for public office. After starting his political career on the Atlanta City Council — from 1982-1985 — he served in Congress from 1987 until his death shortly after this film was completed in early 2020. In an interview clip, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said he “challenges the conscience of the Congress.”

One of Lewis’ more notable actions as a liberal congress member was to stage a sit-in on the House floor over lack of action on gun control in 2016.

Unfortunately, if you don’t already know this rough sketch of Lewis’ life, you may find this rough sketch of a movie too lacking in form and detail. The movie’s worth a look, though, even considering Lewis’ life has already been well-documented elsewhere, in other documentaries, and in books by himself and others.

CNN has broadcasted the film, and it’s also available from such online sources as YouTube, Amazon, Google, iTunes and on Netflix (this last as DVD-only).

Official website including “watch at home” options:  www.johnlewisgoodtrouble.com/