‘Selma’ Is a Riveting Salute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

You could spend your Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off sleeping in and hitting up massive sales at the mall, or you could take a few hours to reflect on the life and legacy of the man himself. The Director Ava DuVernay‘s 2015 movie Selma offers an awe-inspiring depiction of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s fight for racial justice.

Selma brings Martin Luther King, Jr. to life as an all-too-human man grappling with the pressures of leading a Civil Rights revolution. The movie features exquisite performances from the likes of David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Common, Tessa Thompson, Andre Holland, and Stephan James. Under DuVernay’s direction, the cast delivers one of the most powerful films about Martin Luther King, Jr. to date. Oh, and best yet, Selma is free to stream on FX and EPIX and available to rent or buy on multiple platforms.

Selma follows the harrowing events surrounding the 1965 Selma march to Montgomery to protest voting rights inequality. The movie opens with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepting his Nobel Peace Prize just as the Ku Klux Klan bombs the Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church. Selma transposes one of the most triumphant moments in King’s life against one of our nation’s most infamous acts of domestic terrorism. DuVernay lets us see the four girls brutally killed in the attack — Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair — as innocent little sylphs, dressed in their demure Sunday best, unaware that they are about to become lambs for the slaughter.

From there, Selma represents the fight for voting rights in Alabama as more than just a matter of arguing against antiquated bylaws. This movement was a moral battle for the soul of our country, and Selma depicts the grueling, real-life battles it entailed. Throughout the movie, Selma shows King as he faces opposition from all sides. Slowly but surely, Dr. King realizes he can only succeed as a leader if he gathers all of the bright young voices of the Civil Rights movement to work in unison.

Selma was nominated for Best Picture at the 2015 Oscars and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. John Legend and Common composed and performed the winning song “Glory,” which invokes images of the present-day fight for racial justice. Common features as a Selma cast member in, as well. Notable members of a generally stacked cast also include Oprah Winfrey, Niecy Nash, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Tim Roth.

A national holiday and a canon of cherry-picked quotes have shaped Dr. King’s legacy. As a result of these common cultural touchpoints, a national memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. evokes an uncomplicated, sure-footed superhuman. Selma is a movie that successfully unravels this tightly wound cultural perception. DuVernay shows audiences the intricacies of Dr. King—and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole—that the non-violence and the copy-paste quotes often belie. Selma “blows the dust off history to find its beating heart.”

By doing so, DuVernay’s Selma creates a movie experience that ushers Dr. King’s memory off of a historical pedestal, onto solid ground, where the Civil Rights Movement started in the first place.