The film’s accomplishment emphasizes the non-violent campaign strategy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., movingly played by David Oyelowo in one of the year’s finest performances. We get to see King depicted in very human terms, both in his relations with his wife, Coretta (Carmen Ejogo), and others in the civil rights movement as they plan and argue about how to carry on their dangerous fight. We also get to see King rising to oratorical demands as he gives speeches to define the movement and rally followers. It is a well-rounded, deeply affecting acting achievement that gives us a man, not a myth.

Another major strength of the historical drama is the depiction of President Lyndon B. Johnson by Tom Wilkinson, a remarkable actor who has Johnson down pat as the tough, beleaguered President who feels he must go slower than demanded to eventually guarantee voting rights to African-Americans, rights consistently denied in Alabama and elsewhere. The adversarial face-offs between the unrelenting King and Johnson are dramatized intensively as the president is pushed reluctantly toward presenting a voting rights bill to Congress. The assault on the Selma marchers, vividly captured on film and broadcast to the nation, puts Johnson and the country on the spot as King intended.

One is stirred as people of conscience white and black, travel to Selma to join the fight and are prepared to march in solidarity from Selma to Montgomery. There are stirring moments when we see the ranks swell and the battle joined.

“Selma” manages to evoke the sweep of history by concentrating on the specific situation from a variety of perspectives. The human toll is solidly there to jog our emotions, but the film also presents that toll in the framework of racism and the overall fight to overcome discrimination built into the system. Tim Roth gives an appropriately nasty portrayal of Alabama’s then Governor George C. Wallace, a staunch segregationist at the time, told off by President Johnson. (Wallace was later shot and paralyzed while a presidential candidate.) There is a scene in which F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover gets the go-ahead from Johnson to viciously expose King’s sexual infidelity. Dylan Baker is convincing as Hoover, but I wish someone had been cast who looks more like Hoover, a familiar figure in news clips. On the other hand, Wilkinson manages to look very much like the President Johnson we know from memory or news footage.

Director DuVernay and screenwriter Webb have accomplished the feat of depicting the array of those who were or became public figures: Ralph Abernathy (Colman Domingo); Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch); Andrew Young (Andre Holland); Congressman John Lewis (Stephen James); James Forman (Trai Byers); John Doar (Alessandro Nivola), the Rev. Hosea Williams (Wendell Pierce) and others. Among the large cast, Oprah Winfrey (one of the film’s producers) provides a memorable moment at the outset of the film playing Annie Lee Cooper, who stalwartly attempts to register to vote but is turned away.

The power of the film to depict victory cannot wipe away the situation a half century later when we see retrogressive efforts by states, in the north and south, that pass restrictive laws meant to keep citizens, black and white, from voting. Also, despite hard won rights, many who can vote do not vote. If my understanding of the facts is correct, in Ferguson, Missouri, wracked with conflict over a killing of an African-American by a white cop, the African-American population is so large that if enough people voted they could elect candidates who could replace the white governing structure.