Movie review: Hyde Park on Hudson | canada.com

Hyde Park on Hudson

Starring Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams and Samuel West. Directed by Roger Michell.

Rating: Parental Guidance

Advisory: sexually suggestive scene, coarse language

Running time: 95 minutes

Three stars out of five

Everyone knows Homer. But Menander is another story.

Though incredibly popular in his own age for his string of comedies, Menander never made it past the clutter of history because comedy is of the moment, but tragedy is forever.

That?s why Bill Murray will be eclipsed this Oscar season by Daniel Day?s Lewis?s long Presidential shadow. However, that doesn?t mean Murray?s portrayal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt isn?t worthy of the same praise.

Murray brings a fiery spark to Roger Michell?s gassy mixture of history, biopic and boudoir confessions in Hyde Park on Hudson, a movie that dares undress one of America?s most beloved leaders.

Based on the posthumously published diaries of a distant cousin, we?re introduced to FDR at the height of his political and personal charms, having instituted the New Deal and pulling the nation from the depths of the Great Depression with his buoyant attitude and shining faith in the face of overwhelming odds.

It?s 1939, and as Hitler builds his war machine, Britain looks across the Atlantic for help from a potentially powerful ally.

The newly crowned King George and the woman who would be called ?The Queen Mum? call on the President for help, but FDR needs assistance of his own.

He needs to be carried physically from room to room so he?s never seen in a wheelchair, and he needs to be carried emotionally by a strong, nurturing, female force ? who is not his wife, Eleanor (Olivia Williams).

Gasp! The President of the United States was having an affair while in office!

This movie gives us the whole juicy story with tell-all detail. That said, gossip and infidelity looked a lot different than it does now ? if not in deed, than certainly in public perception, because there was no perception.

Back in the days before cellphone cameras and digital zoom lenses with auto-stabilizers, the public was largely in the dark about the private, everyday existence of its elected leaders. Moreover, dalliances weren?t considered a significant problem because back before the Internet and TV, the most popular form of entertainment was sex.

Indeed, it?s a whole other reality, which is one of the central reasons why Hyde Park on Hudson succeeds as an experience: We feel we?ve entered a different time, where time itself seems to tick in different measure.

This may sound like a benevolent way to express a somewhat sluggish pace, but the movie is never dull and never feels ?slow.? It just doesn?t have a particular destination in mind, so there are moments where we wonder just what point Michell is trying to make ? if any.

Is this just a curious string of events and a quasi-scandalous premise painted on top of a pretty New England postcard from the past? Or is the director of Changing Lanes and Notting Hill trying to articulate a particular idea?
Impossible to say with any certainty because even though this is a movie about an American President at a volatile time, Hyde Park on Hudson feels entirely apolitical. It may as well be Exotic Marigold Mansion, because this is a character-focused piece at every turn.

Breaking the political reality down to the personal narratives in play, Michell gives us a series of rather entertaining scenes, from watching the president seduce his distant relative with a stamp book to a picnic for the King and Queen featuring hot dogs, Michell?s selection tends towards rom-com sensibilities.

That said, this is a movie starring Bill Murray as FDR and Laura Linney as his mistress/cousin; there?s no way it could be formulaic, or for that matter, all that romantic.

We are spared the sex scenes. But we do get all kinds of engagement, which ensure any hint of ordinary flies out the window as we negotiate the whole scenario from a modern perspective.

It all feels so curiously out-of-whack for some reason, watching Linney and Murray have suggested hand-hanky-panky in a gorgeous old American convertible on the rolling fields of Hyde Park, N.Y.

Yet, if you can get past the truly awkward moments and minor embarrassments, the movie packs its own strange pleasures, and most of them come care of Murray, who truly brings FDR to life in all the right ways.

Finding the perfect balance between arrogance and avuncular warmth, kindness and crafty creepiness, Murray animates the core of the political animal from the inside out. With every knowing wink and relaxed folksy moment, we see a person who can make others believe, which isn?t just the heart of politics ? it?s the very purpose of acting.

Murray seems to grasp the parallels without a whisper of visible self-awareness, but his confidence in the role allows him to touch on every shade of Bill Murray shtick without cheapening the performance or compromising the biographical homage.

He releases his comic twinkle, and in a rather odd way, it lends him a presidential air of cockiness veiled in God-fearing humility. Think Bill Clinton in a wheelchair, complete with brilliant and outspoken wife, and you get a sense of how they play it out.

The movie has no big emotional payoff, but there?s entertainment value in the pop and fizzle as the fireworks of American mythology explode in a night sky from another era.

Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/12/06/movie-review-hyde-park-on-hudson/

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