HYDE PARK ON HUDSON, now playing at Landmark’s Embarcadero and Clay

Cinemas in San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area, is a charmingly intimate look

at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s life at his home in Hyde Park, New York.

 

The film focuses on Roosevelt’s erotic relationship with his cousin Daisy Suckley,

which only became public knowledge decades later when her letters (and some of his)

were discovered under her deathbed. Roosevelt is played, with a touch lighter than

air, by the great Bill Murray; Laura Linney’s Daisy is a wallflower at first flattered by

Roosevelt’s attention and then angered by its limits. Both are completely believable and

very affecting.

 

The other focus is on the weekend in June 1939 when the King of England, George

VI, and his wife Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), came to Hyde Park and

were famously treated to an informal (for them) hot dog picnic. They are presented (by

Samuel West and Olivia Colman) quite differently from the way we saw them in The

King’s Speech.

 

Olivia Williams is astonishing as Eleanor Roosevelt. She has her look, her manner,

her physical presence, even her gait, to the life. The screenwriter Richard Nelson gave

Eleanor almost nothing to do, which was a miscalculation. In her occasional few seconds

of action Williams gives the best performance in the film. Also excellent in brief roles

are Elizabeth Marvel as Roosevelt’s secretary Missy LeHand, and Elizabeth Wilson as

his gorgon of a mother. The costumes and production design are true to the period and

beautifully enhance the presentation.

 

The main interest of the film is the insight it gives into President Roosevelt’s life, and

by extension into his work. Nelson (who adapted his BBC radio play for this film), and

Murray too, succeed admirably by their restraint. Some reviewers have criticized the

film for not giving a rounded view of FDR, larger than life (as he could be) and booming

out an inspirational message. But Roosevelt was a hugely complicated man, and Hyde

Park on Hudson is not a biopic. A lot of the value of the film is precisely that it shows

him in a way we are not familiar with – quiet, lonely, exasperated by the tensions in

his household, needing intimacy but also moved as much by his own nature as by his

circumstances toward extreme reserve in his emotional life. By keeping most of the

action centered on small things, and by deliberately underplaying this publicly expansive

figure, Nelson and Murray give us a better look at Roosevelt than most of us have ever

seen before.

 

In particular, the film shows a lot about how Roosevelt’s paralysis affected his life.

We see him in his wheelchair, being carried when necessary, moving with difficulty

by clinging to the side of his desk. During his lifetime the press scrupulously avoided

showing any of this – there are only eight seconds of film in existence that show

him (after polio) walking (with a brace and a strong man to lean on), and only two

photographs (both taken by Suckley) showing him in a wheelchair. The film helps us

understand this part of his life in a way difficult to access otherwise.

 

The visit of the royal couple was not just a colorful episode, but a historically important

event. In June 1939 war in Europe was recognized as inevitable, and Britain urgently

needed American help to survive. But Roosevelt was constrained by the isolationist

views of Congress and the electorate, and couldn’t give the help he wanted to. Not

only were Americans determined not to repeat the experience of World War I, a lot of

them (especially the Irish) were actively hostile to Britain. The Mayor of Chicago said

publicly that if he ever met the King he would punch him in the nose. The real point

of the hot dog picnic was to humanize the British royals in American eyes and make

them appear friendly and approachable, so it would become easier to help them. And

Roosevelt did after this manage a lot of back door help (Lend-Lease, the Destroyers for

Bases program) before Hitler solved that problem by declaring war on the United States

after Pearl Harbor.

 

In keeping with the private focus of the film, close attention is given here to the

personal relationship between the King and the President, which developed into a

strategically important one. It is handled here with great sensitivity and insight.

One false note is the character of the Queen, who is shown here shrewishly hectoring

the King about his stammer and comparing him unflatteringly to his brother (the former

Edward VIII).

This is quite inconsistent with the historical record and all that is known about their

relationship, and it mars the film’s effectiveness.

 

But on the whole, and in almost all its parts, Hyde Park on Hudson is a superbly

crafted and beautifully presented look at a moment in time and an aspect of the life and

personality of one of America’s most important and compelling historical figures.

 

Lincoln

Directed by Steven Spielberg

 

 

This movie has been hyped and promoted far out of proportion to its merit.  Even Lincoln scholars have gotten on the bandwagon heaping praise on this mythologizing propaganda.  At first I was puzzled by this.  I couldn’t understand why so many scholars would throw their support behind this film in the public way that they have.  Are they just afraid to set themselves against something that is so popular and has so much money behind it?  But after thinking about it for a few days, I realized that the scholars are actually the problem.  Steven Spielberg consulted them and probably followed their advice.  He didn’t make this up out of his head, and he didn’t do all the research himself.  The community of Lincoln scholars is largely beholden to this idealized, honorific, and in many ways, false conception of Lincoln that the film presents.  This film is a correct reflection of the way Lincoln is perceived and reconstructed in mainstream American society, and this in turn derives from the scholarly community that has created and perpetuated this Myth.  This Lincoln could have come out of Leave It to Beaver.   He’s a genial, storytelling, wholesome, fatherly figure.  Everyone says Daniel Day-Lewis plays him so well.  I don’t get it.  He’s nothing like I imagine Lincoln to be.  Lincoln was depressive.  Melancholy.  He was forbidding and aloof.  He was indecisive on the one hand, and stubborn on the other.  He had human compassion and a crude sense of humor.  He was a very astute politician, he had a talent for making deals, and an appetite for power.  Psychologically, he was very complex and hard to gauge.  He did tell stories, but his stories tended to be earthy, if not vulgar.  They served the purpose of entertaining people and making himself the amused center of their attention.  At the same time, they served a defensive function in that they enabled Lincoln to conceal himself.  Lincoln the story teller remained an elusive, private, enigmatic man.  The film implies that the story telling was didactic, that he told parables like Jesus to teach people moral lessons.  He might have done that.  He won some court cases that way, but for the most part Lincoln the story teller was a man hungry for attention and approval.  He was a politician looking for support and good will.  This movie simplifies him and turns him into a warm, friendly cupcake.  It is an apology, an attempt to elevate him, beatify him.  It’s a feel good movie, to make Americans feel good about themselves, about America, about the Civil War, and about Lincoln.  It starts out with soldiers quoting the Gettysburg Address back to Lincoln, as if the common soldiers were fighting out of a sense of idealism and dedication to the cause of liberty and freedom.  Then there is a shot of Lincoln raising an American flag, and a scene with him and his wife, Mary, in private having an intimate conversation like a married couple that is getting along well and has good communication.  It’s a lot of nonsense.  The biggest lie of all is the portrayal of Lincoln’s marriage and of Mary Lincoln.  This is an attempt to rehabilitate Mary Lincoln from the corrupt, mentally ill woman she was, who was the bane of Lincoln’s life, and make her appear to be some strong, influential participant in his decision-making and private deliberation.  Sally Field is completely unconvincing as Mary Lincoln.  This is a very contrived, incredible role that has nothing to do with the real Mary Lincoln.  There was one scene that felt real and that was when Lincoln and Mary had a screaming argument over their son, Robert’s, enlistment in the Union Army.  They even have Lincoln slapping Robert in the face at one point — a very unlikely scene that illustrates how far afield they are of Lincoln’s true character.  In a couple of places the word ‘fuck’ is used as a curse word.  This is an anachronism.  ‘Fuck’ did not become widespread as a curse word in American English until the late 19th or early 20th century.  They can get away with it, of course, because not too many Americans know this and they don’t teach it in school.  The rest of the movie was manipulative, annoyingly distorted, and mendacious.  The predominant content of the movie is actually the drama surrounding the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, rather than about Lincoln himself.  This is also a rather simplified, sanitized, honorific reconstruction.  I thought the acting was rather poor in general.  Everyone was overplaying and the characters and scenes seemed simplified and cartoonish.  This whole movie is just annoying from beginning to end.  And it is rather dull, I have to say.  I found myself waiting for it to end.  I couldn’t get interested in anything they were doing.  They have taken an extraordinary time and an incredibly interesting person and turned them into something mundane and ordinary.  If you haven’t seen it, don’t go.  Watch Ken Burns Civil War series instead.

If you want to learn about Abraham Lincoln for real, take a look at Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln the Man.  It was originally published in 1931 and the U.S. Congress actually tried to ban it.  That speaks well for it right there.  Of the many biographies of Lincoln, which tend to be redundant and hagiographic, Masters is my favorite, because it falls well outside this mainstream tradition.  Most biographies of Lincoln deal overwhelmingly with the last five to ten years of his life, and they focus on his policies and actions as President rather than his personality or his character.  Masters has his flaws, like they all do, but it strikes me as more realistic and it takes more interest in Lincoln as a person.  C. A. Tripp’s The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln (2006) details Lincoln’s affinity for same-sex relationships.  My paper, “Was Abraham Lincoln Gay?” (2010) Journal of Homosexuality 57:1124-1157, draws heavily on Tripp, and examines Lincoln’s private life and the 19th century sexual culture in which he grew up and lived.  Lincoln and Booth:  More Light on the Conspiracy (2003) by Donald Winkler, is a fascinating study of the assassination of Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth’s relationship to the Confederacy’s intelligence network.  David Donald’s Lincoln is informative and probably accurate in its facts, although it tends to fall into this apologetic, mythologizing tradition, and is heavily weighted toward the last four or five years of Lincoln’s life as President.  One of the best books you can read on this subject is Lincoln in American Memory (1995) by Merrill D. Peterson.  This is an excellent study of the growth and evolution of the Lincoln Myth in American culture, which this present film perpetuates and promotes.  Peterson explains how Lincoln was transformed from this ineffective, indecisive, much hated, vilified president that he was into this godlike icon of American goodness.  It is important to understand this because it enables one to see why it is well-nigh impossible today to get a balanced, “realistic” understanding of Abraham Lincoln.  One’s position on Lincoln will be heavily influenced by one’s take on American history since Lincoln, and where one stands socially and politically in contemporary society.  There is no such thing as “objectivity” when it comes to Lincoln.  He has become almost a religious myth.  It is an annoying myth to me.  It is a false myth that embodies a saccharine view of American society and its history, that is conservative, self-congratulatory, glosses over unsavory developments, and is sometimes invoked to justify highly offensive policies, like the expansion of executive power and the abrogation of basic constitutional liberties.  This film falls squarely in that mythological tradition, and I think was subtly crafted to resonate with some of the recent overreaches of executive power in the conduct of warfare and the bypassing of due process.  I’m not going to make the case in detail, because I would have to watch the film several more times, and I am loathe to put myself through that.  But I remember having that feeling several times as I watched it that I was being bamboozled and that it was really referring to our time, rather than being an honest historical piece.

Steven Spielberg has made a film that he knew would make people feel good and that they would be willing to pay money to see, not something that would disturb them and make them question everything they had been taught about Abraham Lincoln and American history.  He has succeeded very well and will undoubtedly be well rewarded for it.  But count me as a NO!  I am not taken in by it.

Hendrix 70 Live at Woodstock

Directed by Michael Wadleigh and Bob Smeaton

 

This was a one-time showing of Jimi Hendrix’s concert at Woodstock in August of 1969 at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco, December 4, 2012. We arrived a few minutes late and the film was already in progress. It was my fault. Sorry. We missed some of the introductory interviews with fellow band members and promoters that explained how Jimi Hendrix was recruited to play at Woodstock, but we didn’t miss any of the concert, which was mesmerizing. Jimi Hendrix had a powerful physical charisma that naturally drew everyone’s eyes toward him. But, of course, it was his guitar playing and his singing that kept people spellbound. I love the way he sings a song. He had a natural feel for how to use his voice to let the song speak through him. He was casual, yet precise. His sound is chaos. It is the sound of a battlefield. It is agonized. There are screeches and sirens, explosions and clamor, bombs going off. It can be relentless and tries to crush you. And yet it can subside into captivating, soul searching lyricism. His voice rides above this tumult smooth and steady. He doesn’t scream or shout. He sings even though underneath there is a seething cauldron.

Someone who knew him once told me that Jimi Hendrix cared about three things: music, drugs, and sex — not necessarily in that order. In my case, I would say it is the arts, ideas, and sex. The order depends on circumstance and inspiration. But I have a natural affinity for Jimi Hendrix. Rock and roll guys tend to be relaxed and easy going, but underneath there is a driving sexual energy that is combative, defiant, and even reckless. The music helps to channel it and give it some structure, but in Hendrix’s case the disorder and recklessness is right on the surface. The chaos is palpable to the point of being overwhelming.

The concert included many of his standard favorites like Fire, Foxy Lady, and Red House, but my personal favorite was his version of the Star Spangled Banner which then morphed into Purple Haze. His version of the Star Spangled Banner is a different view of America than they play at NFL football games. His version is harsh, abrasive, and violent. When the rockets red glare and the bombs burst in air, you can actually hear the rockets blaring and the bombs exploding. It is not a sanitized, romanticized America that makes you stand and put your hand on your heart. It is the violent, rapacious America of slavery, the extermination of the Indians, the pillaging and despoiling of the natural environment, the unnecessary wars, the millions incarcerated, the violence between the sexes, the fear of walking the streets at night, crumbling schools, declining wages, the disillusioned and angry. It is all there in Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. I remember being taken with it the first time I heard it around age 16 or 17. I remember many people being offended by it. Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner is America with the gloves off. He then segues into Purple Haze, which is another of my all time favorites. Missing from the show was All Along the Watchtower, which I was hoping he would do. Altogether it was a magnificent concert, and I am so glad I was able to see it. If it comes around again or they put it out on DVD, by all means try to catch it. Very unfortunate his early death.