[To celebrate one of our strangest holidays, Groundhog Day, I’ll be AmericanStudying that film as well as four others in the long and unique career of Bill Murray. Leading up to a crowd-sourced post featuring your takes on these and other Murray classics!]
On what we can
learn from three of the best dramatic portrayals of presidents on screen.
1)
Amistad
(1997): I haven’t written much in this space about Steven Spielberg’s 1997
historical epic, other than this brief
and complimentary reference. It’s fair to say that in the decades since, as
we’ve finally started to see more
historical films featuring Americans
of color in central rather than supporting roles, even the better “white savior” stories (and
Amistad is that to be sure) have come
to feel less important as a result. But Amistad
still has a great deal to recommend it, and high on that list has to be Anthony
Hopkins as former President John Quincy Adams, who comes out of retirement
more than a decade after losing his reelection bid to help the film’s Freedom
Seekers successfully
argue their case before the Supreme Court. What Hopkins’ Adams reminds us
is that the arcs of presidents’ lives continue long after their time in office,
and, in the best of cases, can evolve and deepen as a result.
2)
Lincoln
(2012): As that hyperlinked post illustrates, I have dedicated multiple posts
to Spielberg’s more recent and more successful historical film. Other than a very
unnecessary ending (a hallmark of Spielberg’s best films,
I’d argue), I think Lincoln is pretty
perfect, and much of that is due to Daniel Day-Lewis’s truly
stunning performance. And while the moments that endure in our collective
memories of the film are likely the big ones like that “Now!” speech, I believe
what makes Day-Lewis’s performance so great and so important are the many layers
of humanity he brings to his Lincoln, including (nay, especially, says this
DadAmericanStudier) his delight
in Dad Jokes. This is a mythic figure brought back to earth in the best
ways.
3)
Hyde Park on Hudson
(2012): The misfortune of being released in the same year as Spielberg’s film
is one of a few reasons why Roger Michell’s historical biopic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill
Murray) and his 1939 relationship with his cousin Daisy Suckley (Laura Linney)
didn’t make much of a splash and isn’t well-remembered today. I’m not here to challenge
those trends, as I don’t think the film ultimately adds up to much and too
often feels like salacious gossip about FDR’s rumored extramarital affairs. But
it is a shame that Murray’s performance has been likewise overlooked, as I
think it’s one of his best, capturing so much of the wisdom, humor, frailty,
and humanity of a president and man dealing with countless challenges (internal
as well as external). In particular, Murray quite literally embodies the toll
of FDR’s long and ongoing battle
with the polio-caused paralysis that afflicted him for the final few decades of
his life. Another highlight in Murray’s long and profoundly impressive career.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one more
time: What do you think? Takes on other Murray films?
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