Ava DuVernay’s Selma, about Martin Luther King Jr.’s organization of three marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 (protests that led to the Voting Rights Act), was produced for about $20 million. The film was privately funded (it was picked up for distribution by Paramount following completion) and that meant DuVernay had artistic autonomy, but it also meant that she didn’t have the dough to buy the rights to King’s famous speeches. For those expecting Selma to be a biopic about a legendary leader (it’s not), this may seem like a critical omission, but the absence of the speeches ends up being one of the film’s biggest boons; this is a story not about a great man’s famous sound bites, but about a flawed man, the burdens of greatness, and the scars they left on his mind, body, and heart.

Selma‘s a focused film that covers a pivotal moment in American history (about 90 days), with no flashbacks to King’s upbringing or the march on Washington. The story’s concern is Selma, and what King did there. The pertinence of the film to the issues of today is undeniable, and is most evident in its most horrific sequence, in which we’re shown the gory results of the March 7, 1965 march. The march ends in a sickening bloodbath as we see white police officers savagely brutalize King’s protesters without mercy. While the imagery is rightly appalling and explicit, it isn’t the most disturbing thing about the film: What’s most disturbing about Selma is how relevant today, in 2015, in light of current events, the image of a white “protector” murdering an unarmed black man is. It’s been 50 years. That’s the most disturbing thing. It’s not the most interesting thing about the film, though.

What’s most interesting is that the film is a human history lesson, not a mythical one. Prolific English actor David Oyelowo takes a more grounded, sensible approach to playing King than anyone could have expected. His King is a man of intense focus and imperfect ego. Jealous. Neglectful. You expect him to channel the commanding presence and oratory prowess of King, and to be sure, on that front he delivers: He makes the speakers rumble when on the podium or pulpit, mobilizing large crowds to take a stand. It’s thrilling to watch, and he sounds just like King, and it’s all very, very impressive. But the real key to Oyelowo’s performance is when his mouth is shut; that’s when you’ll quiver.

The best scene is an uncomfortable domestic impasse. After listening to a surveillance recording that’s supposed evidence of her husband’s infidelity, Coretta King (a strong Carmen Ejogo) launches a low, slow, burning set of yes-or-no questions at King (concerning his mistresses), who looks puny sitting in a chair as she towers over him. Having Coretta impose her will by commanding her husband, one of the greatest speakers in history, to answer yes-or-no questions, is brilliant. He looks weak, and bruised. In a later scene, Coretta visits King while he’s behind bars after being arrested following a public protest. She mentions that she’s met with Malcolm X, who’s willing to give King his support. He’s hurt upon learning his wife met with his rival, and even dares to suggest that she’s infatuated. It’s these moments of sheer vulnerability, off the front lines, that honor King’s life like no history book or documentary ever could. It’s a thoughtful perspective. To truly appreciate his accomplishments, we must remember that King breathed and bled and hurt like all of us, and yet still did all the things he did. He was strong, not invincible.

In the film’s first incarnation, which was written by Paul Webb and was to be directed by Lee Daniels (who eventually passed the project up to do The Butler), the story centered heavily on King’s negotiations with President Lyndon B. Johnson. When DuVernay was brought on to direct in 2013, however, she revised the script (with Webb, who stayed on as penner), shifting its focus significantly, concentrating more on King’s organizing in Selma. LBJ is still in the movie (Tom Wilkinson plays him very well), but his presence is limited and is clearly de-emphasized from the original script. DuVernay makes it crystal clear that the President is no white savior (he’s mostly utilized as a force of opposition), though the film has come under criticism for allegedly misrepresenting LBJ’s level of cooperation with King on the Voting Rights Act.

Also in the film as government officials are Tim Roth, as AL Gov. George Wallace, and Dylan Baker, as J. Edgar Hoover. Their malevolence feels largely overplayed, and though Roth’s turns as weaselly heels are always fun, he and Baker (who’s not nearly as good) feel like they’re in a separate film. Oprah Winfrey, Common, Martin Sheen, and Cuba Gooding Jr. also play supporting roles, with Winfrey making the biggest impression as a Annie Lee Cooper, a woman fighting tooth and nail for her right to vote as an American citizen (she was also a producer on the film).

Selma is a phenomenal movie when it operates as a character study, showing us King having one-on-one conversations with different people around him, revealing layers of his personality in a nuanced, elegant way. When the film zooms out however, as in the big marching scenes or the handful of times King takes the pulpit, the film loosens its grip and becomes a less rich, less grounded affair. Whiffs of “prestige picture” arise now and again (especially near the film’s close), but Oyelowo does all he can to maintain the film’s sense of immediacy. There’s an emphasis on chronicling King’s perceptive maneuverings and strategies when orchestrating the marches, but these sections ultimately feel like detours on the more compelling, emotional journey of getting to know the man behind the scenes.

Like I mentioned earlier, we hear none of the famous speeches. DuVernay wrote new speeches in their stead, and remarkably, they sound 100% in accordance with King’s voice and philosophy. (To be fair, I’m no MLK historian, but for what it’s worth it was totally believable to me that he wrote these things.) Because they’re tailor-made, the new lectures and sermons fit into the film’s larger narrative much better than the original speeches would have, and in fact, had the original speeches made it in, they probably would have pushed the film into the realm of hagiography in earnest.

DuVernay proves that she’s a terrific director, especially when it comes to collaborating with her actors. Oyelowo, a young veteran, has his proudest outing as an actor here, and we miss him every moment he’s not on-screen. Like Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Selma‘s cultural significance is critical and will inevitably permeate all conversations about the film. As a reviewer, I must stress that its cinematic value speaks for itself, even when you swipe away the context of today’s struggles.

Entering this awards season discussion late in the game is David Oyelowo, whose career-defining performance as Martin Luther King Jr. in Ava DuVernay‘s ’60s-set drama Selma seems to be turning more and more heads each day as we inch closer and closer to the Oscars. Hopefully for the English actor (who in 2014 also made appearances in Interstellar and A Most Violent Year), the film’s rave-train will hit maximum velocity come Oscar night, and he’ll walk away holding a shiny new statue. (DuVernay has arguably better chances, but the efforts of both actor and director are equally worthy.) The film opened in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas, and rolls out wide this Friday. I sincerely recommend you shell out the dough to see what all the excitement is about. You won’t be disappointed.

The film takes place over a 3-month period in Selma, Alabama, and follows Dr. King as he rallies his followers to march through the small town to accelerate the emergence of the Voting Rights Act as well as amend its preliminarily shoddy implementation. What heightens the film is its treatment of King as a character: We see him vulnerable and torn as his home life hangs precariously in the balance in the dangerous climate of his civil rights crusade. Oyelowo’s sensitivity and willingness to act with his mouth shut (this is a quieter Dr. King than we’ve ever seen on screen) is easily some of the strongest work turned in by any actor this past year. The film also stars Carmen Ejogo, Oprah, Tim Roth, and Tom Wilkinson.

I caught up with Oyelowo during his visit to San Francisco the day after a screening of the film at the Castro Theatre with DuVernay and Oprah (who also produced the film). In a roundtable interview, we talked to Oyelowo about not being able to use King’s famous speeches; approaching Dr. King as a man, not an icon; the process of adopting King’s verbal delivery; what he brings to the role as an Englishman; the original Lee Daniels incarnation of the project; the use of silence in his performance; the current shift of Hollywood toward black stories, and more.

Yesterday at the Q&A, you mentioned that it was difficult to get the rights to Martin Luther King’s speeches.
Steven Spielberg has the rights to the speeches. Oprah was beaten to the punch by him. [laughs] Not for lack of trying, by the way; we tried. But I’m hugely relieved that we didn’t, because the last thing I want as an actor playing Dr. King is people comparing and contrasting word-for-word speeches that he had given. At the end of the day, what we felt we had to do was express the spirit of this man and the facts of what went down, but not feel like we had to do an impersonation or beat-by-beat account of those speeches. In all honesty, because the speeches [in the film] were written in the rhythms and in the cadence and in the spirit of Dr. King’s speeches, it meant we were able to tie the speeches to the narrative that we were weaving rather than have things in there that didn’t really chime with the film. It ended up working out great, I think.

You play Dr. King with such vulnerability, which is something we don’t really get to see when he’s depicted in other works. How integral was that?
It was absolutely necessitous, I think. This is a historical figure around whom copious amounts of documentaries and books and specials and TV films…there’s a lot out there. But the one thing, in my research, that they don’t have as much of is who the man was behind the speeches, behind the iconography, behind the holiday that is named after him. In many ways, why make a movie if it’s not going to be revelatory? It’s just going to be stuff that you find in a documentary, so go watch a documentary. I was more interested in–and thankfully, Ava was more interested in–who the guy is at home with his wife, taking out the trash, putting his kids to bed, having doubt, fear, shame, guilt. What was he like as a husband? A friend? A father? These are all things that evoke universal truths so that we as an audience can get into the film.

What was the process of you nailing Dr. King’s voice, his cadence, his accent…It’s done very well.
It was a layered approach. There are a lot of recordings, and part of my job as an actor is to understand the musicality of how we speak. Doing accents is something I love to do; I barely do films in my own accent now! [laughs] I think I’d be thrown if I had to play an Englishman. I also worked with an incredible dialect coach named Elizabeth Himelstien, who works with me on all my films where I have an American accent. I had this incredible journey towards doing this film. In 2007, I felt called by God to do this. I had this visceral reaction when I read this script.

What went on to happen in terms of my career felt like I was taking on this divine journey of a history lesson through movies. I did Lincoln, and you have the Civil War and I’m doing a scene with Daniel Day Lewis as a soldier asking for the vote. I did Red Tails, which is about fighter pilots in the second World War who were marginalized because they were black, had the best bomber support record in the entire war, but came back to segregation in America. I did The Butler, which goes through 82 years of civil rights history, playing an activist. I did The Help, in which I play a preacher in a pulpit in Greenwood, Mississippi. Those films were all in the DNA of what [led] me to do this film. I kind of felt like all those years I was gleaning things along the way.

What do you, as a non-American person, bring to these roles that’s unique from what an American actor could bring?
I know that the director who originally cast me, Lee Daniels, said, of everyone who came in to read this role, you’re the only one who’s come in without any reverence or weight of, “I’m coming in to play Dr. King”. That’s because, even though I’ve admired him in my childhood, I didn’t grow up like a lot of African-Americans did, in their grandmother’s house with a photograph of Jesus, JFK, and Martin Luther King. I haven’t grown up with the deification of him, with “Saint King”, as part of my upbringing. I very much approached him as a man first. I think that’s what I’m able to bring. That’s the thing we wanted this film to have: the man behind all of that. I think being a foreigner helped me get there quicker.

Do you see him as a saint now?
[laughs] I see him as a saintly human being. I think that showing how human he really was in many ways elevates what he did. He did it in spite of being like us, which really makes me examine my own life. I find myself going, “What am I doing?” I’m the exact same age as he was, and I’m not changing the world. It really makes you examine your role in the shifts that are needed for humanity to continue to improve and grow. My admiration for him has now transcended the iconography. He’d been reduced to “I have a dream.” A phrase, really. You can’t really plug into that. I hope the film makes people appreciate who he was and what he did.

You were already cast in the previous version of this film, the Lee Daniels version. Was that version any different from what the film is now?
The project has differed, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do with Lee. The original script, as written by Paul Webb, was more focused on LBJ. King was not the focal point. When Ava came onboard, she felt very strongly that it should be about King and the movement. The man and the movement. In terms of Lee, I think what happened there is that we hadn’t yet had the moment that The Butler and 12 Years a Slave gave us. You have two films with black protagonists as the driving force which did very well at the box office. I truly believe one of the resistances to this film in the time that I had been aware of it was this notion that, “Well, if it’s a black lead, what does that mean for foreign [markets]? If it’s King, who was 36 at the time, it can’t be Denzel, it can’t be Will Smith, so that means it’s going to be some unknown actor. Do people really want to see a King movie?” There were all these questions which kind of seem ridiculous now when you see how immediate and necessitous I think the film is. That’s what we were suffering under the weight of until those [two] undeniable successes came along.

I’m guessing the decision to shift the view from LBJ to MLK was made prior to 12 Years a Slave.
It was, because Ava was already onboard by then. It was a beautiful synergy of circumstances. Those films came out, and we were off to the races. Up until then, it was a struggle. That’s why I asked Oprah to come onboard. Despite Ava’s brilliant work, I could feel we were segueing again into, “Okay, can we make it for this budget? What does that mean for this?” She came on and she was like, “Okay guys, this is what’s happening. Let’s do it!”

You mentioned at the Q&A that you brought on Ava after Lee dropped out. How easy or difficult was it to get that process going?
It wasn’t easy, because the film that we had done before we went on to do Selma was a $200,000 movie. This is a $20 million movie, and almost never do you get that with black directors. You never get that with black female directors. I went in and tub-thumped on her behalf, and thankfully her film Middle of Nowhere is very persuasive in terms of it being a great film, and that’s what broke the deadlock.

You talk about the musicality of King’s voice, but there’s a pivotal scene in the film in which Carmen is giving you yes-or-no questions, and you actually say very little. Talk about the silent moments in your performance.
That’s one of Ava’s gifts, her ability to tell as much story through silences and human behavior as through the spoken word. It’s something I very much gravitate towards as an actor. I think acting is reacting at its richest and most true. Also, I think we’re watching a film about a great orator; how interesting to see how he is when he’s not doing that. When this very strong woman whom he married, who actually introduced him to civil rights, is talking to him…I love that scene. I think it is the ultimate “behind the veil” scene. It is truly revelatory and I love that we go against the thing that King is known for, which is talking, and we see him being.

You’ve been in the industry for a while now. How have you seen the landscape of Hollywood change for people of color?
What’s happening now is that, for people of color in film, we’re making a shift. Selma, 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, Fruitvale Station–these are films whereby a white protagonist isn’t crowbarred into the center of it to tell a black story. I think that that has been a tradition that has long existed in Hollywood at the highest level, and it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Of course those films do well, because the story is interesting, but we’re not following the right people. You set up an obstacle; how does the central character overcome it? What’s often happened is, you set up an obstacle, and suddenly this white person comes along and helps the black person through it. I feel that tolerance for that has dropped, from people like me, actors, producers, directors…and I think financiers now have a comfort level where they will now support people of color being in the driver’s seat of their own stories, because those films [that I mentioned] are doing well. That is something I’ve hoped to see, and I think that literally in the past 12 months we’ve seen a shift.