When a figure is as fundamental to our history and national identity as Martin Luther King Jr., is there anything left to learn about him?
Actually, it may be precisely because King is such a towering figure in our collective memory that we tend to focus on a few big moments — Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma and of course “I Have a Dream” — and let the rest fade into history, leaving us with more myth than man as time goes on. That’s the argument behind the new HBO documentary “King in the Wilderness,” a fascinating and poignant look at the less-examined final years of the man’s life, timed for the 50th anniversary of his death.
It’s a compelling argument: Google a list of King’s iconic moments, and it’ll likely skip the years between 1965 and his 1968 assassination. Young people today are familiar with that iconic 1963 speech at the March on Washington, but much less so King’s blistering 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York, excoriating U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
It was an agonizing moment for King, who felt he could no longer stay silent about the war but risked fury from across the political spectrum — including from some associates in the civil rights movement — by getting involved in the fray. The speech, feels Rep. John Lewis, another King friend interviewed here, was the best he ever gave: “He literally poured out of his heart the depth and essence of his soul.” Yet King was vilified by many afterward, and felt both betrayed and abandoned.
Like that nugget on Belafonte “swan-diving” into the garbage pail, this film is filled with fascinating bits of information, culled from hundreds of hours of archival footage and countless photos. It veers from the very public to the deeply personal, including heart-wrenching scenes of King’s father collapsing with grief over his son’s coffin. A friend, Xernona Clayton, describes using the powder compact from her purse to fix the mortician’s messy work on King’s jaw.
