A few well-known photographs from the civil rights era are reconstructed at the start of the new Netflix movie “Rustin,” such as the moment when Black students sat at a whites-only lunch counter in Mississippi. Opening on a closeup of a dignified young woman, we then see ketchup pouring down onto her hair and face.

Another scene shows little Ruby Bridges as she’s escorted by marshals to a New Orleans elementary school, an image also recreated in a famous Norman Rockwell painting. Director George Wolfe has the girl skipping, oblivious to the tumult around her, and this inspired tweak says so much about children’s hopefulness and resilience and the power of imagination.