Speaking of FDR, over the weekend I found at Community Aid, a charity shop chain here in Pennsyltucky, Hyde Park on Hudson, starring Bill Murray as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Laura Linney as his cousin, Daisy Suckley. I had heard of and been curious about this movie and was under the impression that it had come out in the 2017-2018 timeframe, but no, it actually came out in 2012. Time just does not make sense anymore.
The movie is about the relationship between FDR and his cousin, who became one of his closest emotional companions during his administration, with much of the film’s drama occurring around the visit of George VI and his wife Elizabeth (the future Queen Mum) in 1939 to Hyde Park for a summit. That’s one of the problems with the film; it’s not sure what it wants to be about (the FDR/Daisy relationship or the FDR/George summit). It’s a bit confined in its telling (it was based on a stage play), and a key sequence takes place in the dark and is poorly lit (because it’s the 1930s and there isn’t lighting at night in the middle of nowhere). It feels very Masterpiece Theater, and not because it stars Linney who used to (and may still) host, and the subject matter, especially as it deals with George VI and his stutter, would probably make it a nice companion to The King’s Speech.
The best scene was probably the private meeting between FDR and George at Hyde Park after a far-less-than-perfect state dinner.
The unexpectedly amusing scene was when Olivia Colman, as Elizabeth (the future Queen Mum), talks about her daughter Lilibet, ie., the future Queen Elizabeth, because a decade later Colman would portray Lilibet in The Crown.
And the two British Olivias, Colman and Williams, share the screen. (Olivia Williams is a very underused Eleanor Roosevelt.)
Murray was fine as FDR, but I never saw FDR in him. I saw Bill Murray, in make-up, sometimes inflecting his voice a little bit, but still recognizably Bill Murray. I applaud Murray for taking the role and doing something outside his wheelhouse, and he was good in that scene with George I cited above, but he also shattered the illusion. Sometimes actors don’t disappear into their roles and you’re conscious that you’re watching the actors, and Murray, because he was Murray, made me conscious that I was watching Linney and Colman and Williams and Samuel West (as George VI) as actors instead of as their characters.
Overall, it was a nice little movie, the sort of thing you watch when the weather is dreary and you’re dreaming of warmer days.