The interracial-romance turmoil at the center of 'Loving' is brought to light with a clear-eyed humanity

"Loving" is an unpretentious film about unassuming real people, but don't let that mislead you. Just as Richard and Mildred Loving ended up overturning the status quo and making American legal history, so this feature on their lives by writer-director Jeff Nichols turns out to be a film of quiet but quite significant strengths. Nichols, responsible for "Mud," "Take Shelter" and the underappreciated humanistic science fiction epic "Midnight Special," has gone in a different, more historical direction here. He's made an involving socially conscious drama about the interracial couple whose marriage, illegal in their home state of Virginia, led to the unanimous 1967 Supreme Court ruling that racist anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. But "Loving" is hardly a legal drama rife with attorney strategies and courtroom scenes.