The most suspenseful scene in Ava DuVernay’s Selma does not depict the dramatic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, nor an Oval Office facedown between Martin Luther King, Jr., and President Lyndon Johnson. No, the real cliffhanger happens during a twilight domestic scene between King (David Oyelowo) and his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo). The husband’s alleged extramarital affairs are the immediate concern, and at this crucial moment in the civil-rights struggle, two married people must acknowledge a few intimate truths. The storytelling takes a pause, the gifted actors operate on a slow simmer, and Selma conveys a tingly sense of the way the march of history turns on human give-and-take in humble rooms.