This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 20, 2012 - There is one memorable scene in "Hyde Park on Hudson," an otherwise uneven and occasionally wrong-headed look at the doings, romantic, diplomatic and familial, of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at his family home in upstate New York.
It is June of 1939. Roosevelt, played with a commendably light touch by Bill Murray, is playing host to King George VI (Samuel West). The stuttering monarch, last seen on these shores in "The King's Speech," has come to America to request, painfully, that Roosevelt throw America's support behind Great Britain in the great worldwide struggle both know is coming.
After a comic-opera dinner ruled over by the president's quick-tempered mother, the two leaders repair to Roosevelt's study, where "Bertie" gets a little whisky in him and confesses something. He despairs of ever being viewed by the British people, not to mention his wife, as a strong wartime leader, He blames his speech impediment and the air of indecisiveness it conveys.
Roosevelt nods his head and heaves himself up from his wheelchair and with great effort makes his way around the room to his desk, going hand over hand from one piece of furniture to another, almost falling once or twice, grunting as he drags his useless legs behind him. Bertie, stunned, stops whining, and with no further mention of physical disabilities, these two leaders of the free world get down to business.
The scene works. Indeed, most of the interactions between the reluctant, speech-impaired king and the much more regal president are dramatically successful, generally lightly comic without descending into farce. Director Roger Michell ("Notting Hill") tells the FDR-Bertie part of the story well, but he and screenwriter Richard Nelson seem to have been defeated by the unpleasant contradictions in the rest of the narrative. Instead of exploring them, they tried to skim over them, at least until the very end.
The main storyline, about a relationship between Roosevelt and his dowdy sixth cousin, Daisy (Laura Linney), seems at odds with itself. That narrative is based on letters written by the real Daisy and found after her death. It is told both dramatically and in voiceovers by Daisy.
We learn that Franklin and Daisy would go for drives in the country so he could get away from his contentious family and his insistent aides. They enjoy just being together with the car top down in the sunlight.
Then one day they are parked on a grassy hill, seemingly all alone -- apparently the president had suggested the Secret Service and the local gendarmerie take an hour or two off -- and Roosevelt makes a creepy pass at Daisy. Daisy apparently gets the message and, as she (unseen) pleasures the president, the camera focuses on his blissful face. Romantic music swells, as if we were watching the beginning of a great affair.
What we are really watching is a powerful and egotistical man taking advantage of a very humble woman. It's almost as if the filmmakers, knowing that the relationship between Franklin and Daisy was nothing close to a romance, decided to pretend it was one -- in part by distracting us with amusing tales of the stuttering king, much loved by the folks who vote for the Academy Awards.
"Hyde Park on Hudson" is worth seeing for Bill Murray's judiciously controlled performance in the lead role, and the scenes between Franklin and Bertie are charming. I could have done without the inappropriately romantic portrayal of the one-sided sexual relationship between Franklin and Daisy. At least the filmmakers could have dispensed with the sentimental music that accompanies them almost every time they meet.