Warm Springs
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Movie Reviews of Warm Springs
Movie Review: "But I'm married to you and you are my life"
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the first questions I asked about Warm Springs, HBO's biopic of Franklin D. Roosevelt was how did Kenneth Branagh get his legs to look like a polio victim? If it's makeup it's amazing, and if it's digital photography it's even more amazing. But kudos should also be given to the wonderful Branagh, who as a Brit., transforms himself into the ill-stricken president with consummate ease.
Rather than focus on Roosevelt's political life, Warm Springs chooses instead to deal with his valiant fight to overcome the effects of polio, dealing with his life from 1920 to 1928. It's a valiant and stirring production with an insightful teleplay, a stellar cast, and a superb director that coalesces it all to bring forth a rich and inspirational film.
The year is 1921 and Roosevelt then thirty-nine, attends a summer camp for boy scouts. He washes his face with some contaminated water, contracting polio, a disease that rarely struck adults. It left him with paralyzed legs and little hope for the future. With a small glimmer of hope, he traveled to a rundown resort in rural Georgia for a possible cure from exercise in a pool filled by the warm mineral waters.
There, among the rural poor and other people with crippling disabilities, in what must have seemed like a completely different universe, FDR discovers his own humanity. It is this humanity and his innate sympathy for the common man that helps shape his democratic leanings.
Although the power of the warm springs never rehabilitated Roosevelt, or gave him the "miracle" cure, the positive energy that emanated from the other polio survivors gave the man a new lease on life. He ended up being instrumental in the conversion of Warm Springs from a backwater hellhole to a streamlined, ultra-efficiently managed polio-treatment center, a mecca for hundreds of thousands of others who had been crippled by the debilitating illness.
Kenneth Branagh gives a towering performance as Roosevelt, showing him as a fighter, who hides, dreams and, with the help of a few others, regains the will to be a political leader. More than that, he is convincing as, bit by bit, the inexperienced, self absorbed and somewhat philandering patrician gives way to a man of uncommon passion and heightened sensitivity.
Cynthia Nixon is also good as Eleanor Roosevelt, who broadens her own horizons and conquers her own fears. She proves herself to be a loyal and faithful wife, even when Franklin asks her whether she can really have a happy life with him being so crippled.
The supporting players are also strong with Jane Alexander playing as his over-protective and snobbish mother Sara; David Paymer as his crusty chief aide Louis Howe; Kathy Bates as his no-nonsense physical therapist Helena Mahoney; and Tim Blake Nelson as Tom Loyless, the man in charge of Warm Springs.
Warm Springs embraces the complexity of the situation by simultaneously approaching the story from personal, social, medical, and even political perspectives. And the film cleverly avoids the saccharine and overly sentimental. The intelligent and carefully scripted dialogue is both revealing and thought provoking. The set design is remarkably faithful to the period, and the costumes are beautifully recreated.
Perhaps Warm Springs is most significant for showing us how Roosevelt removed the stigma of polio from the public consciousness, forever abolishing the misguided notions that the disease adversely affected the brain, that it could be spread merely by physical contact, or that it represented some kind of moral punishment for the "sins" of the victim. But this fine film is also significant for showing how one man could beat all the odds and go on to become one of the United States of America's greatest presidents. Mike Leonard September 05.
Movie Review: FDR...FDR...FDR!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Because I am experiencing disability and politics in a much different era than FDR himself, I appreciated seeing Joseph Sargent's well-crafted release. This is a movie which people are going to be disappointed when it ends simply because it is over.
I saw this movie after my term as College Democrats of America "Democrats with Disabilities" base vote caucus chair ended. While the individual caucus was not founded until the 21st Century, I thought of the significance that the College Democrats of America organization had been founded through FDR's desire for collegiate outreach throughout the Democratic Party.
I've seen other presidential movies (both documentary and docudrama), but I've never seen one so strongly promoting disability issues as being so personally interwoven to a politician's mission. FDR essentially became the great politician beloved by generations of Americans because he had to confront and challenge his own obstacles.
Immediately following a scout visit, Roosevelt (Kenneth Brannagh) contracts polio. In 1921, most of the American public is afraid of people with disabilities, and Roosevelt himself is initially no exception. Initially believing that his public days are gone, he subsequently comes around with the support of his wife Eleanor (Cynthia Nixon) and political associates. Refusing to let him wallow in self-pity or become a shut-in as preferred by his mother Sara (Jane Alexander) their encouragement gives him the emotional and mental strength ultimately necessary to lead America.
Contracting polio in a society that would hate him for who he became made Roosevelt precisely the man America needed.
The film ends as he is giving Al Smith's nomination speech at the 1928 Democratic Convention. Because most of the Americans who were not at the convention were listening over radio, they did not know that their eloquent speaker was in fact a person who used a wheelchair. This `camouflage' directly challenged one of that era's stereotypes about disability and intelligence.
Realizing that it was done for budget and time constraints, I would have loved to see how Roosevelt continued on the campaign trail. However, this movie touched on many of the issues I and other people with disabilities have experienced today. I appreciated that the screenplay openly shows FDR frustrated with other people's diminished expectations of him only because of disability.
Rather than embrace a 'poster child' approach, this film explicitly presented FDR and the other people with polio at Warm Springs as a "community" of people who made a difference for themselves, each other---and a nation!.
Movie Review: Enlightening Story
Summary: 5 Stars
If anyone ever had a legitimate reason for giving up on a political career it was Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. WARM SPRINGS is the film that shows how they fought back that urge and conquered their fears to become two of the greatest Americans. The film garners some of the best acting I've witnessed from lead actors and supporting actors as well, but the main highlight of this piece is the story. The story is one that will remain with me for many years to come because it depicts the time in this couple's life that prepared them to lead America through the Great Depression as well as World War II. The world needed men and women of courage and stamina to defeat the likes of Hitler and because of what happened to them here no one had more courage and stamina than Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
The picture we see of Franklin as the film begins is one of a rich, spoiled, self absorbed man who is in an extra-marital affair. He and Eleanor are on the verge of separating. It's 1920 and his star is on the rise politically. It seems to be fear of committing political suicide that prevents that breakup. Eleanor at first is a shy traditional wife who is afraid of crowds, who resists the opportunity at every turn to help boost her husband's career.
Fate intervenes and Franklin contracts a devastating case of polio, and it seems at first that his political career is over. But, he receives a letter from a man in Warm Springs, Georgia who runs a place where polio victims can swim in the near 90 degree spring water and receive therapy to build up their leg muscles. It's here that Franklin again finds a mission for himself; here that he sees people who were born under much less fortunate circumstances than himself. In spite of being victims of polio or their caretakers, these less fortunate men and women create a community of people who truly care for each other. Franklin learns at Warm Springs to be compassionate. Back in New York, Eleanor supports her husband by keeping his name in the political fray. She becomes an activist and makes speeches and demonstrates for the downtrodden. She learns in his absence to be strong and as a result grows into a truly political asset.
After this experience, this couple not only loved each other, they respected and revered each other as well.
Movie Review: High Spot a Musical Number by Felicia Day
Summary: 5 Stars
You have to scroll pretty much all the way down to the very end of the credits, slightly before the standard "No Animals Were Harmed" card, before you find the name of Douglas Scott, the choreographer responsible for WARM SPRINGS' best moment, an enchanting dance number in wheelchairs performed by the soubrette Felicia Day (and a trio of supporting dancers). You don't expect a musical number in WARM SPRINGS, which basically outlines the struggles of FDR to find his humanity after a crippling outbreak of polio robs him of the use of his limbs. He stumbles upon a rundown ramshackle lodge in rural Georgia which boasts extra magnesium in its waters, and extremely high temperature waters, and he decides to give it a try to see if he can walk again.
After he gives an interview syndicated around the country, endorsing the healing powers of Warm Springs, the hotel finds itself besieged by polio victims, and its regular clientele threaten a boycott. Obviously this segment of the film will remind viewers of a certain age of the hysteria atound AIDS and HIV, for the swimmers refuse to use the same pool as FDR and his friends, even though medical science tells them that after the fever has broken, polio sufferers are no longer contagious. Eventually the numbers swell and the entire hotel is run for the benefit of the convalescent. That's where Felicia Day comes in, as a dancer who cab;t quite cover up some ugly looking scars on her right wrist. Apparently she has tried suicide before, since dancing was all she knows. Can the merry and healing spirit of Warm Springs help her despair?
The answer comes in a climactic and suspenseful "musicale" organized by the hotel residents themselves. When Eloise Hutchinson (Felicia Day, best known for her extended role on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) opens her mouth to sing, I thought I recognized the tune--Jerome Kern's "I Won't Dance" from ROBERTA--but I thought, no, they won't use that, it would be too hurtful and too ironic. Ms. Day however proceeds to sing it beautifully and, as if in mocking reply to the naysayers, she manages to make her chair dance for her; then a trio of older women join in. It is the most cunning thing I've seen on the screen in a long time.
Movie Review: Understanding FDR: Physical Challenges Offer Triumph
Summary: 5 Stars
WARM SPRINGS is one of the finest films ever produced by HBO and clearly belongs on the theatrical screens. But until that happens the news of the release of the DVD should allow those who missed this phenomenal film to feel greeted with well-earned joy.
Writer Margaret Nagle and Director Joseph Sargent have created an isolated time in the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the inception of his polio at age 39 and the treatment of his impairment at Warm Springs, Georgia, and use this potential tragedy to demonstrate how a man of means and high political aspirations was humbled by a debilitating disease only to find healing and consolation at the hands of 'the common people', a change in his priorities that marked his popular success as a President who inherited the leadership of a country devastated by depression and war.
Kenneth Branagh is superlative as FDR, finding just the right amount of bravado and churlishness and womanizing while continuing to be the man of great potential and a loving husband to Eleanor (a surprisingly terrific Cynthia Nixon). His overbearing mother Sara Delano Roosevelt (Jane Alexander who is still remembered as a perfect 'Eleanor' in the older 'Franklin and Eleanor') tries her best to belittle Eleanor, only to enhance Eleanor's blossoming into the world respected, humanistic First Lady she became.
But much of the action is aptly placed at the healing resort of Warm Springs, a run down hot springs operated by Tom Loyless (Tim Blake Nelson) and the place where Helena Mahoney (Kathy Bates) nursed FDR back to health. The importance of this spot grows through the film and through FDR's life and in the end it is the beneficiary of his estate.
Watching Branagh tumble from political barnstormer to reluctant patient to humanized President is a heartwarming venture. His supporting cast is excellent - Bates, Nixon, Alexander, Nelson as well as David Paymer, Deborah Calloway Duke, Danny Connell, and many others. The direction by Joseph Sargent is one of simplicity, purity of purpose, and highly respectful of his story and his view of history. This is an important film. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, June 05