BEFORE: Linking from "The Candidate", I should think this one should be quite obvious - Peter Boyle was also in "Where the Buffalo Roam" with Bill Murray (last seen in "Quick Change")
THE PLOT: The story of the love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret "Daisy" Suckley, centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King and Queen of the United Kingdom visited upstate New York.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The King's Speech" (Movie #1,119)
AFTER: The reason for the follow-up is that this film is not only set in the same exact time period (right on the eve of World War II) but it features some of the exact same characters - namely King George (Bertie) and his wife, Elizabeth, and even the stuttering problem is alluded to.
But that's not why we're here tonight. I mean, that is, it is and it isn't, since I definitely want to play upon the WW2 connection, it's a great lead-in. We're here to discuss Bill Murray as FDR, and all that this entails. FDR seems like one of those larger-than-life personages, and an inspiration not only for his unprecedented number of terms in office (7? 8?) - hey, he was like the Michael Bloomberg of the 1940's! - but also for his service of the country while battling a crippling disease, all of the economic programs he spearheaded to lift the U.S., both literally and figuratively, out of the Great Depression, and yeah, we haven't even touched on the war stuff yet.
(Technically, there were no term limits on the Presidency back then, every President had served no more than two terms because, well, that's what Washington did, and what Washington recommended future Presidents do, lest we lapse into tyranny again. FDR was perhaps the viable exception, because who else was going to lead the country through its darkest hours? Once FDR's time was through, I believe that's when they passed an amendment limiting any future Prez to two full terms, plus two extra years if he was a vice-president who gained the office through the death of a pres.)
But rather than give a straight biographical accounting of his time in office, the film tries to show the large by focusing on the small - the weekends he spent in upstate New York, and one particular time when the King and Queen of Britain came over for a picnic. This situation carried more import than one might think, because this was the time for decision-making - would FDR support the U.K. by entering the war? (turns out, wars are also good for the economy, but on the other hand, people tend to die in them, so it's one of those good/bad things)
Of course, a man's entire life cannot be depicted in a 90-minute film. Heck, the entirety of that important weekend can't even be squeezed into that time-frame. So I understand that choices must be made. But this is where the film sort of lost me, in the choices that it made over what to depict. And here's where discretion (or lack thereof) sort of enters the picture. Last night we didn't actually SEE a politician having an affair, we only saw a woman leaving his hotel room, and then him adjusting his jacket. As I said, that's not definitive. Could have happened, maybe not.
In this film, there's almost no discretion. We learn more about FDR than perhaps we needed to - like how many of his cousins (including the one he married) that he was, let's say, intimately involved with. Plus we learn, umm, exactly what Franklin was into, and it started with showing them his stamp collection, then before you know it there's a drive in the country where they ditch the Secret Service, and good God, do I have to spell it out for you people? Are you really going to make me talk about the President getting a "handy J"?
To those of us who lived through the Clinton administration, maybe this is nothing new. In fact, there's a long line of U.S. Presidents known for messing around with their secretaries, or their housekeepers, (or slaves - yeah, I'm talkin' about you, Jefferson...). And I heard James Buchanan favored the old "rusty trombone", and Grover Cleveland practically invented the "Hot Lunch", but that's another story.
Again, it's worth noting this takes place in a different time. People tended to look the other way about anything remotely sexual back then, it's a little thing called "discretion" that died some time around the advent of shows like "A Current Affair" in the 1990's (to be ultimately replaced with "disgust") And there was enough power attached to the Presidency that when the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, that part of me was thinking, "Well, of course, why else would somebody WANT to be president, if not to bang an intern or two?"
For the real finagling of legal definitions, Roosevelt and Clinton went, er, "hand in hand". Clinton said with a straight face "I did not have sex with that woman" because in his opinion, having things done TO him by a woman rather than him actively doing things to her did not constitute "sex". Yeah. Also he told Congress "I am not in a relationship with her" using the present tense, which notably did not make any mention of whether he had been in a relationship with her in the past. Or maybe it depends on what your definition of "is" is.
For FDR, who knows what kind of mental gymnastics took place in order to justify him getting his rocks off with this cousin, that cousin, that secretary and that married woman next door. Maybe a "happy ending" didn't constitute sex in the 1940's - heck, maybe most people didn't even know what one was. People went to church and stuff back then, and technically that's a sin. ("sin of emission?") I know they used to have blood tests to prevent people from marrying their cousins, but whoever said you couldn't mess around with them?
I think it's only recently that this Daisy woman's diaries were found, and FDR's proclivities came to light. Maybe it's all because his wife lived in a different house, with other women, where they made furniture together. You know what I mean, strong women, they liked working with tools - do I need to be more clear? But god forbid you call Eleanor Roosevelt a lesbian in a film... Still, part of me just isn't sure why this is all appropriate for a movie. If people are going to see whatever they want in FDR, why did we have to see THIS?
Also starring Laura Linney, Samuel West, Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Marvel, Olivia Williams, Elizabeth Wilson.
RATING: 3 out of 10 hot dogs
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