This is worth seeing. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, stricken early in his career by polio, discovers Warm Springs, Georgia, a dumpy sort of summer resort with a swimming pool loaded with hot mineral waters. Is it a "cure"? He decides to find out.
It covers some of the same ground as "Sunrise at Campobello," but it's not so schematically written. (Campobello was first a play.) This film is darker and damper, and more socially sensitive, giving time to the still-segregated black attendants and to the other, equally disabled patrons of the place.
In one scene, Kenneth Branaugh, as Roosevelt, gives a graduation speech to the students and their parents at the local one-room schoolhouse. The period, the late 1920s and early 1930s, is precisely evoked by the crew. A handful of raggedy kids and uncomprehending rural mothers and fathers sit in the dreary little place and listen politely as the former governor of New York tries to go on about HIS education and how it led to public life -- you know, Groton ("my high school"), Harvard, Columbia Law. Yes, the highest calling is a political career he tells these people who are wondering where their next chicken leg might come from. His hand begins to shake as he plunges on and realizes the utter absurdity of the situation, and later he remarks, "I've given many public speeches. I don't know why this one bothered me so much." In many ways it's the most successful scene in the film -- far better than the one in which a disabled young girl in braces struggles to her feet and manages to hobble over to him while a thousand and one violins throb in the background. Where have we seen THAT before? It's more grounded than "Sunrise at Campobello" but it has a similar structure. A few minor triumphs followed by heart-breaking defeats, and ending with Roosevelt's introduction of Smith at the Democratic convention, standing on his own two feet.
What puts it over, I think, is Kenneth Branaugh's performance as FDR. Gee, he's good. It's easy to do an impression of Roosevelt. Ralph Bellamy gave a decent impression in Campobello. But Branaugh doesn't take the easy path of simply mimicking FDR's aristocratic speech patterns -- "I hate WAW and so does EleaNAW!" It's quieter, more nuanced, and better than any of his Shakespearian characters. He squeezes everything possible out of a script that sometimes lapses into the strictly conventional.
It's a chronicle of the times, too. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, four-term president of the United States. It wouldn't happen today. He'd never get near the presidency. The press would be all over him and his wheelchair. We live in such tolerant and enlightened times now. And if he ever WERE elected, his women companions -- not to mention Eleanor's woman companion -- would be tabloid fodder and he'd be impeached and maybe lynched. And we'd all have missed that little touch of Franklin in the night.
It covers some of the same ground as "Sunrise at Campobello," but it's not so schematically written. (Campobello was first a play.) This film is darker and damper, and more socially sensitive, giving time to the still-segregated black attendants and to the other, equally disabled patrons of the place.
In one scene, Kenneth Branaugh, as Roosevelt, gives a graduation speech to the students and their parents at the local one-room schoolhouse. The period, the late 1920s and early 1930s, is precisely evoked by the crew. A handful of raggedy kids and uncomprehending rural mothers and fathers sit in the dreary little place and listen politely as the former governor of New York tries to go on about HIS education and how it led to public life -- you know, Groton ("my high school"), Harvard, Columbia Law. Yes, the highest calling is a political career he tells these people who are wondering where their next chicken leg might come from. His hand begins to shake as he plunges on and realizes the utter absurdity of the situation, and later he remarks, "I've given many public speeches. I don't know why this one bothered me so much." In many ways it's the most successful scene in the film -- far better than the one in which a disabled young girl in braces struggles to her feet and manages to hobble over to him while a thousand and one violins throb in the background. Where have we seen THAT before? It's more grounded than "Sunrise at Campobello" but it has a similar structure. A few minor triumphs followed by heart-breaking defeats, and ending with Roosevelt's introduction of Smith at the Democratic convention, standing on his own two feet.
What puts it over, I think, is Kenneth Branaugh's performance as FDR. Gee, he's good. It's easy to do an impression of Roosevelt. Ralph Bellamy gave a decent impression in Campobello. But Branaugh doesn't take the easy path of simply mimicking FDR's aristocratic speech patterns -- "I hate WAW and so does EleaNAW!" It's quieter, more nuanced, and better than any of his Shakespearian characters. He squeezes everything possible out of a script that sometimes lapses into the strictly conventional.
It's a chronicle of the times, too. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, four-term president of the United States. It wouldn't happen today. He'd never get near the presidency. The press would be all over him and his wheelchair. We live in such tolerant and enlightened times now. And if he ever WERE elected, his women companions -- not to mention Eleanor's woman companion -- would be tabloid fodder and he'd be impeached and maybe lynched. And we'd all have missed that little touch of Franklin in the night.