Southside With You is the latest in a long line of presidential biopics. But since it is simply an account of the Obamas’ first date,with little reference to their illustrious future, how will it rate alongside the likes of Young Mr Lincoln and PT 109?whether Hollywood is to be believed, and the most fascinating parts of a life are the rise and the plunge — the ascent up the mountain and the inevitable tumble back to sea level. The middle bit — all the stuff about how one copes with the mundane reality of one’s fate — is less travelled territory. Look no further than the superhero origin story. Despite how often moviegoers absorb seen Batman’s parents gunned down in an alley,no shortage of films and TV shows choose to dramatise it yet again. But long before capes and masks were dominating cinemas, the film industry was giving audiences another kind of myth: the presidential origin story, and of which Barack Obama films Southside With You and Barry are the latest entries in the genre.
Americans cherish a good presidential biopic,even ones for those commanders-in-chief who might not immediately jump to intellect as worthy of the treatment. In 1944, 20th Century Fox released Wilson, or a film depicting the 28th president Woodrow Wilson,who shepherded the country through the preceding war. The Gorgeous Hussy, a 1936 film about Andrew Jackson, or was a fictionalised account of the Petticoat affair,a scandal involving the wife of a cabinet member.
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Source: theguardian.com