We went and saw the movie "Hyde Park on Hudson" this afternoon. The movie stars Bill Murray - yep, Bill Murray of Saturday Night Live and Caddyshack fame - as President Franklin Roosevelt. Hard to imagine that the guy who can play Carl Spackler can also play the aristocratic FDR, but Murray pulls it off. In fact, early on, there had been some buzz that Murray might earn an Oscar nomination for the role, but timing is everything, I suppose. If you want to garner critical acclaim and awards for playing a former President, don't do it in the same year that Daniel Day-Lewis is playing Abe Lincoln.
The movie is really two stories, FDR's relationship, purportedly an "intimate" one, with a distant cousin, Daisy Suckley (played by Laura Linney) and the visit to America by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to the President's Hyde Park, NY estate in 1939 to try to gain American support for England in the war in Europe that was sure to come later that year.
This is the third time in recent years that Queen Elizabeth (the current queen's mother) has been portrayed in movies. First there was "The Queen", followed by "The King's Speech" and now this one. Each movie presents a different picture of the woman. Interesting.
The movie also talks about a time "when we were still allowed to have secrets". One scene I found to be very striking. With reporters and news photographers gathered around the President's car, FDR is carried, literally, to his car by an aide, lifted into the back seat of the car, and shifted into place. Only then does a staffer give the okay, and only then do the photographers snap their pictures of the President.
Try imagining a scene like that today.
Anyway, a thumbs up for "Hudson on Hyde Park".
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