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Rob Edelman: Barry/Barack/Michelle

Films about real American presidents and first ladies currently are playing in film festivals and earning theatrical play. Two that were screened at the Toronto International Film Festival are LBJ, featuring Woody Harrelson as Lyndon Baines Johnson, and JACKIE, with Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy. And as his eight years in the White House fade into history, Barack Obama is a central character in two celluloid biopics which deal with his pre-presidency. One, titled BARRY, also was screened in Toronto. Another, titled SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU, came to theaters at the end of August.

I must admit that, given its subject matter, I saw BARRY primarily out of curiosity. But I was pleasantly surprised: BARRY is a sincere, intelligent portrait of young Barack Obama at a seminal point in his life. The film opens in August, 1981 with Obama (whose first name then was Barry) arriving in New York to study at Columbia University. What is striking is that, here, a future U.S. president is just another anonymous American who walks the streets unnoticed. But the color of his skin is a key. On his first day, he is admiring the campus and a security guard approaches him and tells him to move along, as if a black male never would be enrolled at Columbia University.

Throughout the film, young Barry grapples with his ethnicity and his identity-- and he is shown to be very much the black man in a white world, as well as on a college campus in which he is the only black student in four of his five classes. Barry plays basketball with his fellow students in a school gym, but he also shoots hoops with neighborhood blacks on a street court. He purchases a copy of The Souls of Black Folk, the landmark black American history book penned by W.E.B. Du Bois, but he also begins seeing and sleeping with a pretty white woman.

So who exactly is Barry Obama and what will be his place in the world? That is for him to determine, and what makes the film eminently watchable is your knowledge of who he became.

SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU, meanwhile, is set in 1989, and is a depiction of Obama and future wife Michelle’s first date. With this in mind, as the pair spend time together, the film presents a view of two individuals in the earliest stages of their relationship. But of course, given their future lives, they are not just any old couple. 

Cinematically, the best that can be said for SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU is that it is a nice film. However, beyond the specifics of Barack and Michelle’s conversation, what makes the film worth noting is that, at its core, it works as a portrait of black-American culture and black empowerment. Barack and Michelle visit an art exhibit and react to the powerful images created by Ernie Barnes, a celebrated black-American painter. They respond when they come upon some folks who are playing music and dancing in a park. They spend time at a community meeting with Obama, who is surrounded by concerned residents who know him well, putting forth his approach to raising the funds to establish a community center. And most famously, he and Michelle go to the movies. They see Spike Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING, which had just been released theatrically.

While watching BARRY and SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU, I could not avoid thinking about Donald Trump, and his “appeal” to black-American voters. To paraphrase Trump, blacks are collectively mired in poverty, crime, unemployment. There is no hope in their lives and, by voting for him, Trump has asked: “What have you got to lose?” Well, BARRY and SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU are very real reminders that not all blacks are suffering. Not all are failing. There are blacks who attend college, and finish college. They operate businesses. They are successes in the arts. They become police officers, and run police departments. They run for political office, and are elected. Plus, for the past eight years, there even has been a black-American U.S. president-- and there even has been a black-American First Lady...

Rob Edelman has authored or edited several dozen books on film, television, and baseball. He has taught film history courses at several universities and his writing has appeared in many newspapers, magazines, and journals. His frequent collaborator is his wife, fellow WAMC film commentator Audrey Kupferberg.

 
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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