It’s surprising that three films in the last two years have revolved around the history of Kings George VI and Edward VIII. The King’s Speech garnered Firth his first Oscar while WE proved that Madonna should stick to singing and heckling smokers from stage. The most recent film, Hyde Park on Hudson, dabbles on some of the themes from The King’s Speech, but never really gets off the ground. Mostly, it’s confused, unsure of whether it should promote Bill Murray as a dramatic actor, indulge in the angle of a woman scorned, or try to make a profound link between the past and the present incarnations of politics.
As Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Murray is, at times, believable. At others, his mannerisms and speech patterns vacillate, and the illusion is broken. Maybe this is part and parcel of the film’s assertion that Roosevelt was not how we remember him. Instead of being the stoic four-term President, he was a philanderer, cold and calculated, and – at times – aloof and immature.
I’m not sure it should be a surprise that the thirty-second president carried on affairs with various women. He was human and a politician. He didn’t have Twitter, so it makes sense that his transgressions skirted their way around high school textbooks, but it’s hard to believe that Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, John F. Kennedy, and Anthony Weiner, et. al. were the only culprits in political history. In truth, Roosevelt doesn’t seem too surprised by it either. In the film, he is rather indifferent. His apologies to Margaret Stuckley (Laura Linney) fall on deaf ears but feel more perfunctory than genuine.
The problem with Hyde Park on Hudson is that it’s unsure what it’s trying to tell us. It doesn’t seem too interested in Roosevelt’s trysts. Rather, it seems a bit more interested in Stuckley’s reactions, but not all that interested. The film positions their brief affair and its demise on the weekend that King George and Queen Elizabeth visit from England. As the first monarch to visit the states, this would seem to be a big deal, but Hyde Park again hedges its bets on the importance. At once, it illustrates this meeting of powerful people as a major international event that serves, ultimately, to attract America into World War II. But it also mocks British propriety and illustrates the difference between the voting public of the Americas and the British subjects.
As The King’s Speech emphasizes, George’s stutter nearly kept him off the throne and made him an anxious laughingstock who replaced another philanderer. Hyde Park sort of plays on this angle, but not that well. We see the connection between Edward and FDR, noting that the American public is ignorant of Roosevelt’s transgression while the British subjects are all too aware of their King’s. We also see how George’s blatant stutter hurts his appearance and reign more than FDR’s polio that can be hidden by his sitting in a car or standing with braces behind a podium. Whereas Roosevelt’s voice is clear and distinct, George’s is broken up and discomforting.
Here, the film really wants to investigate the impact of voter knowledge on politics, and perhaps even wants to draw this situation into a contemporary context wherein someone who carries on affairs like Roosevelt wouldn’t make it past a primary’s primary, but it falls short, mainly because of the continual interjections of how Stuckley feels. Are we supposed to lament that we don’t know her strife as well as we’ve heard the conjectured strife of Mrs. Wallis Simpson? Are we really supposed to feel for Stuckley, a woman who gets involved with a married man, who happens to be President? I understand that the heart wants what it wants, but how much stock should we put in the validity of this relationship? Really, it feels more like a “what did you think would happen?” situation.
That said, the film also hypes and then dilutes the impact of the British visit. At first, it seems to believe the importance that it generates about the visit. At the same time, it parallels smoothing international relations to the mutual eating of a hot dog at a barbecue. From this perspective, it seems the Revolutionary War was merely a skirmish that could have been settled over a spot of tea and apple pie. Or, perhaps we could have completely avoided World War II by introducing Hitler to the delectable qualities of knishes.
In the end, Hyde Park on Hudson overhypes and oversimplifies that which it tries to tackle, leaving us just as indifferent and the supposed American voters.
