"By the People": A Kind of Review

Boys! Girls! Friends! Lovers!

A year ago Thursday I posted a fairly lengthy piece about the hopes and responsibilities this President's election posed to a country that so desperately needed a paradigm shift. I kept thinking about that piece as I watched By the People, the HBO documentary about Barack Obama's two-year quest for the Presidency. Press releases for the highly-touted piece promised a candid look into the lives of the people involved in this campaign. being tha thtis was a doc about the current President and not an outgoing one, I expected less of a real doc and more of a hagiography. And I was right.

Successful political campaigns all seem to evolve into short-run cults based around human beings we elevate into demi-godhood for the months leading up o their elections. The high priests and priestesses of these cults are the campaign managers, political strategists, and operatives. This campaign was no exception. It just so happens that the demi-god behind this particular cult gradually evolved into the demi-god for most of my generation and, as such, the political operatives (aside from then-Senator Obama's innermost circle) happened to all be around my age. then-Senator Obama's chief speechwriter is seven months younger than I am. That age bracket is the most empowering portion behind this President's rise to power: we were the chief creative force and the majority of the energy behind his rise to power, and for that and that alone, we deserve to be proud of ourselves.

That said, the film kid in me took a look at this film and began to dissect at about minute three of the picture and never really let up at the film's end. Here were some of the notes I took (and, yes, I was the asshole watching this at home, taking notes):

Out of the Mouths of Babes

The Obama family has been adamant that Sasha and Malia are kept out of the fray of political gossip and tabloid; at the same time members of the campaign staff and this film took great care in showcasing the cute kids involved with the campaign. Do you remember the first full night of the Democratic National Convention? I do: after Michelle Obama gave a fabulous speech, out trotted Sasha and Malia Obama, beaming, as a screen the size of a house descended on the stage so that the cameras could get a shot of them-- Michelle flanked on either side by those cute little girls-- with the Nominee for the Highest Office in the Land in the background towering over the rest of us. The film had at least three instances where the kids involved with the campaign were put on prominent display for their (albeit immense) cute factor. Sasha-- who winks and waves in an early scene about a phone call Obama makes to their house in Chicago from the road-- indulges in the limelight her father casts. I got the distinct sense that the film-makers were acting more as Reality Television producers: Okay, so we need to make sure that the phone call comes while they're doing something homey. Okay, Sasha: are you ready? SMILE! Aaaaand cue phone. . . And of course, there's this sense that Gibbs can't help but make sure his son talks about the election every time he's on camera. The scene with the 11-year-old on the phone is a classic, but of course HBO knew that: they play that snippet in every promotion of the film.

Speech Coverage

The filmmakers employed the same sort of restraint in directing the reverent tone of the film as did Obama's camp in carefully crafting and aggressively moving forward with getting their candidate into the Oval Office: They covered every major speech he made that we remember, from this one all the way to this one. My favorite speech coverage from this film, though, is from a rally I had never seen before. The Senator's grandmother had just died. He was tired, he was grieving, and he spoke anyway. With a slight break in his voice and two tears eking their ways out of the corners of his eyes, the man who would be president talked to the adoring crowd about silent heroes. It was the only time during the entire film where I felt the camera captured him as a human rather than a saint.

Media bits

The filmmakers covered the most famous and incendiary video blurbs that I could remember; namely, this attack ad, the section of this otherwise brilliant speech that Fox and the Hillary camp both used to scare moderate white people and, of course, this well-placed PR stunt. Call me an idealist, but I tend to hold documentary film makers above the level of PR campaigns. I never saw a skeptical reaction to the way the candidate dealt with any of these contentious issues. Let's take the crying fiasco: are you telling me that a film crew with absolutely unfettered access couldn't come up with a single instance of a staffer (or, better yet, the candidate himself) ranting about this? Sure, there's a section where Obama, in a rehearsal for one of the debates, admits that he doesn't want to sound whiny while responding to lies told about him on the campaign trail; but that's the closest we come to seeing him almost honestly assess what it was like to have to be on such a high guard about his image and positions.

All in all, this was a great piece of PR material for the President. It wasn't necessarily a great and nuanced documentary. I don't think it will dispel any of the animosity his opponents have built around him in the ten months since he's been in office. Anyone who wishes and prays that hte Obama Presidency ends in 2012 will still feel that way by the end of this film. On the other hand, for those of us who want to be able to tell our grandchildren that the first Black President of the United States became so in no small part to the sweat, tears, and sleepless nights of members of our generation, we can point to this film as evidence and say "Yes. We did."