EVEN IF MALCOLM X IS SUPER HATED ... IT DOESN’T MEAN THAT KING IS LOVED.

Turning to the final chapters of King’s life, HBO’s King in the Wilderness pulled hundreds of news accounts from 1968-2014 about King, said Peter Kunhardt, the director. In most, he said, “the reporter would summarize him with the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.” He went on, “It never went beyond that. So we were pleased to not deal with that aspect and look at the nightmare the dream turned into.”

Relying heavily on At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, the final book in Taylor Branch’s King trilogy (Branch is also an executive producer), the film portrays King as both dejected and rejected. He is disillusioned by the turn from civil rights to Black Power among a younger generation of African-Americans and the backlash he receives for protesting racial injustice in northern cities like Chicago, opposing the Vietnam War, and demanding fair pay and equitable working conditions for black labourers.

For Trey Ellis, an executive producer, presenting King not as a towering figure but as an outsider was part of what drew him to the project. King “actually outlived his legend,” Ellis said. “I think the documentary is really important in showing he did deal with contemporary issues we’re dealing with right now.” He added, “Even when the press had turned against him, when black people turned against him and saw non-violence as soft, and whites saw him as a communist. Even his own advisers were questioning him. He just put his head down and did the work.”

King in the Wilderness benefits from its counterintuitive approach. We see the influence of King’s wife, Coretta, to carry on with his nonviolent philosophy, particularly his stance against the Vietnam War. In one compelling moment, Xernona Clayton, an organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, celebrates King’s birthday by giving him gag gifts that will help him when he’s arrested. King, clearly tired, is tickled by the gesture.

In order to crystallize the moral courage of King’s non-violence, however, all three films share an antipathy toward the Black Power