Story highlights Lisa Kennedy: New film, 'Loving', about couple in landmark Supreme Court case that ruled laws against interracial marriages unconstitutional

Kennedy's parents were interracial and she is in interracial relationship; recent research showed some still register disgust at such unions

Kennedy: I prefer to focus on the research subjects who did not respond that way as a hopeful sign for America's progress

Lisa Kennedy was film critic for the Denver Post for 13 years and its theater critic for three. She lives in Denver with her partner, Becky, and their two dogs and is currently at work on a book of conversations with African-American influencers about the movies that shaped them. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) In 1958, Mildred Dolores Jeter and Richard Perry Loving got married. A few months later, they were snatched out of their bed, arrested in the middle of the night, jailed, tried and exiled from their home state of Virginia for 25 years.

Lisa Kennedy

In 1963, they became plaintiffs in what would become a landmark Supreme Court case. Loving v. Virginia ruled that anti-marriage laws based on race were unconstitutional. At the time the couple took their vows -- in neighboring Washington, D.C. -- 24 states had anti-miscegenation laws on the books. When the court rendered its unanimous decision in 1967, 16 states still did.

The Lovings are at the heart of a new film, "Loving," opening this week -- as it happens, during the final days of a loud, divisive election, which itself is taking place in a year that has seen America's unending divisions over race flare again and again.

But far from adding to this disheartening din, the film's lead actors, Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton, deliver quietly commanding performances. Befitting its protagonists, "Loving" is a hushed work that shimmers with grace.

Since seeing an early preview screening some months ago, I have had the tender, almost accidental heroics of the Lovings very much on my mind. In this moment of hashtagged, trending fury, the movie reminded me that gentleness, too, has its role in transforming the lives of Americans.

Read More