Warm Springs
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Movie Reviews of Warm Springs
Movie Review: Great film
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a wonderful film showing the struggles of FDR. I watched the film more than once, as I was going to visit Warm Springs, GA. The film made the visit much more interesting.Movie Review: Remarkably faithful depiction of FDR's years of recovery
Summary: 4 Stars
Along with Lincoln, FDR is far and away my favorite president. I love them above all for the
The film has a number of historical inaccuracies. For instance, Roosevelt specified the design of the car he drove and it was not a surprise gift, tough as all biographies recount, he was an atrocious, very fast driver who terrified all who rode with him. The driving was, however, crucial in his development as a person because in driving around the larger area around Warm Springs, he gained a vastly deeper insight into the lives of poor, rural Americans. Early in the film he tells Louis Howe, with no intended irony, that he is a man of the people. That would eventually be true, but it was almost entirely because of what he learned in overcoming his polio and getting to know the people of rural Georgia. The scene where FDR is seen talking to a number of people surrounding his car as Eleanor rides away in the train corresponds to many accounts of his time in Georgia. Although Franklin had a serious problem with intimacy in relationships, he excelled in casual encounters with people and had an easy familiarity with casual strangers.
The worst historical inaccuracy is the depiction of Louis Howe. It is pretty much a travesty. All biographers agree that no one did more for FDR following his polio affliction than Howe. No one spent more time with him working directly with him on his rehabilitation. The film suggests that Howe was somewhat remote from him during these years. The truth is that he was the major presence in both Franklin and Eleanor's life. As was Missy Lehand. Where was she? She makes a token appearance, but she went from playing a minor role in his life in his law firm after leaving the Department of the Navy to being a major addition. She even went on boat trips with him. It was Howe who worked with FDR in his technique for appearing to be able to walk on braces while leaning on someone's arm. David Paymer did a credible job as Howe, though he was vastly too good looking for the role. Howe liked to describe himself as the ugliest man in America and good photos tend to bear this out. The film also somewhat exaggerates Eleanor's role in these years. She was crucial later as his representative to the rest of the world, but that came later. It also hints that things were a tad more affectionate between them than all accounts indicate that they were. I've not read any accounts that Eleanor was a major presence during his learning to "walk," though Louis definitely was. And it is true that he preferred to use Eliot in his walks, though James was also pressed into service.
Some of the things the film gets accurately are that FDR did spend almost all of his financial assets in buying Warm Springs. I also like that they hinted as his absolutely atrocious cocktails, which everyone agreed were undrinkable though irrefusable. Cocktail hour during his White House years was an essential daily ritual. The dreadfulness of his carefully made cocktails came, it is reported, from his heavy use of vermouth and his light use of gin. To make things worse, he used very poor gin.
But all and all I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Much of it was filmed on location, either in Warm Springs or in Hyde Park. Even though he returned to active political life after his nominating speech for Al Smith in 1924, he continually returned to Warm Springs for the rest of his life. He went there with Lucy Mercer in 1945 and died there after a brain aneurysm. he always saw it as a spiritual retreat and he never lost his attachment to the place. Branagh did not look especially like FDR, but did a credible job, as did Cynthia Nixon and Paymer. I also loved the look of the film. I never had a moment when I could not accept it for the early 1920s and I truly loved seeing the scenes at both Warm Springs and Hyde Park. It is definitely a film I recommend to others.
I enjoyed seeing a couple of people in supporting roles. I had trouble for a while identifying who the actor playing FDR's black valet Roy Collier was, but then it hit me that it was Nelsan Ellis, a couple of years before getting the role of Lafayette on TRUE BLOOD. He doesn't get a lot of lines in this film, but he gets a great deal of screen time. I liked that he was shown as a presence in FDR's life. He stayed with FDR for years, and literally put him to bed each night during his White House years and each morning helped get him up. Someone even closer to my heart is Felicia Day, who plays Heloise, one of the polio patients at the inn (she plays the red-headed former dancer who had obviously attempted suicide. She is probably best known as the creator, writer, producer, and star of the online series THE GUILD (its Season Three has just been released on DVD as an Amazon Only special). She is also known as the female lead of DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG and as a guest on BUFFY Season 7 as one of the Potential Slayers and on DOLLHOUSE as guest star on perhaps the two most celebrated episodes of the series, "Epitaph One" and "Epitaph Two: The Return." She even gets to sing a song in this one, though one of her talents, that of playing the violin, has never to my knowledge been put on display in any form. By the way, if you are a fan of THE GUILD, if you pay very close attention you will see Teal Sherer, a very beautiful handicapped actress who always appears in a wheelchair in her roles. On THE GUILD Season 3 she played the very funny Venom, the member of a rival and somewhat evil gaming guild. She had a host of very, very funny moments where she threatens others by detailing all the terrible things that she will do to herself. I wonder if this is perhaps where they met.
Movie Review: Hidden History
Summary: 4 Stars
I rented "Warm Springs" precisely because it promised to showcase FDR's battle with the effects of polio. This was a part of FDR's life that was kept largely hidden for many years, and "Warm Springs" greatest achievement is to show us why. There's the brilliant scene of the boy in the baggage car and the banning of FDR and the other patients from the dining area of the Warm Springs resort. It showed the fear and bewilderment of the public in the face of this largely misunderstood disease.
That part needed to be shown, but "Warm Springs" poses a much more interesting question by its very existence. We have clearly moved beyond the time when we regarded polio with hysterical fear, it is my understanding that polio has been all but wiped out. (Not completely, I went to school with a Mexican immigrant who wasn't vaccinated and contracted it.) The bigger question is have we moved beyond the "pity and revoulsion" that came with handicap at the time? In other words, if FDR lived today and made every appearance in a wheelchair would the public elect him multiple times, or at all? Take for instance the case of George Wallace, it wasn't his dark past as a staunch segregationist that cost him his later political career, but rather that an aide dropped Wallace while boarding a plane.
The conservative wheelchair-using columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote an interesting OP-ED on the FDR memorial in D.C. In it, Krauthammer argues against the stautue of FDR in a chair. It is interesting to note that like FDR, Krauthammer makes an effort to hide his disability. (There's no sign of a chair in the photo that accompanies his byline.) We only know he's in a chair when he sounds off on a disability-rights issue. As a disabled American I would have to disagree with Krauthammer, I think it is very important to have things like this film and that monument to show the world that a person with a disability ran this country for more years than anyone in history and through many of its toughest times. I look forward to a day when people with disabilities will never again hide their disabilities because disability is looked upon with neither pity nor admiration but instead viewed as hardly worthy of comment.
Movie Review: "My darling they'll never see past your legs unless you do."
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't know anything about Franklin Roosevelt, but I found this film very interesting because at the beginning we see him just starting his rise in politics and he came off, to me at least, as a shallow, self-centered politician who cared nothing about the people. Then he gets polio, looses use of his legs, hides away deep inside himself behind booze and self-pity with no plans except to slowly rot away.
One day he receives a fateful letter from a gentleman in Georgia who operates a resort called Warm Springs. The waters of the springs are supposed to have a healing effect. With nothing else better to do Roosevelt goes. Warm Springs is located in a poor area and it's here that Roosevelt meets the true America for the first time. I have no idea how factual any of this is but it a great story.
I was impressed by all of the performances but especially by Cynthia Nixon as Eleanor Roosevelt. If the real Eleanor was truly as caring as she was portrayed here then Franklin was a lucky man.
Movie Review: Interesting Insight
Summary: 4 Stars
Warm Springs is a snippet of the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, played by Kenneth Branagh, who while being groomed for public office was stricken with polio at the age of 39. Roosevelt hears about a new "resort" with mineral rich pools that will restore polio victims. Roosevelt becomes enamored with the people and the rehabilitating affects of this rundown Georgia spa that in turn draws other polio victims to this backwoods area that inspire him to once again run for political office.
I enjoyed this movie with a great cast of characters, including an outstanding performance by Kathy Bates, but in truth I think I enjoyed the series Franklin and Eleanor: The Early Years and Franklin and Eleanor: The White House Years better.