If history is written by the victors, it is typically filmed by the feel-good crowd pleasers. Whether Hollywood histories chronicle the exploits of brave gladiators, courageous soldiers or noble civilians, they almost always exalt the past in a similar cinematic register, with soaring speeches, swelling strings, sweeping montages, thrilling fights and breathless romances.

When the filmmaker Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter,” “Midnight Special”) was writing the spare, understated script for his new drama, “Loving,” he knew that his quiet approach was unusual, particularly for a film about a historical subject so well suited to the fall’s noisy film awards circuit.

In 1958, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, an interracial couple, were married in Washington, D.C. A short time later, back home in Virginia, the pregnant Mrs. Loving and her new husband, a bricklayer, were yanked out of their bed by police enforcing the state’s Racial Integrity Act, which prohibited interracial marriage. They were arrested and ordered by a judge to dissolve their union or leave the state for 25 years. For nearly a decade, the Lovings persevered, until the 1967 Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, struck down anti-miscegenation laws.

The Lovings’ case remade American history, yet Mr. Nichols described the emotional peak of the film as, “a man coming home and crying on the edge of the bed because he can’t take care of his wife.” He spoke in his Arkansas drawl over lunch at a downtown Manhattan restaurant: “That’s what I’m giving people as a climax? But it’s so true and that’s what’s so crushing. That guy was good at one thing: going out and building a brick wall. That should have been enough.”