THE OTHER OBAMA
Netflix documentary portrays struggles and accomplishments of former first lady
It was a real shame to see Barack and Michelle Obama move out of the White House, and those uncultured morons from Zombieland: Double Tap move in. But all good things end. In Becoming, documentary filmmaker Nadia Hallgren’s look at the life and times of the former first lady, Obama recalls that she sobbed for 30 minutes after she and her husband boarded the Air Force One helicopter on their final morning in the building. But it wasn’t sadness, she says. “It was the release of eight years of trying to do everything perfectly.”
Becoming, which shares its name with Obama’s bestselling 2018 memoir, is not heavy-hitting journalism. But it is a feel-good story and a peak into the private life of Obama, even if the best bits are culled from her onstage interviews and meetand-greets from the publicity tour for that book.
It’s also the latest film from Higher Ground, a production company the Obamas formed in 2018 with the aim of creating documentary content for Netflix. It’s already done well with the charming Crip Camp and the Oscar-winner American Factory, and it recently announced a move into dramatic fare with a science-fiction fantasy titled Exit West, and a series called Bloom, about the lives of people of colour in the fashion industry in New York City after the Second World War.
Giving viewers what they want, Becoming features a cameo from the former president, and a lot of anecdotes about their time in the White House. Obama reveals she loosened the dress code of the mostly black and Latino serving staff, since she didn’t want her two daughters to get used to the idea of black men waiting on them while wearing tuxedoes.
And she pleaded with the staff to let the girls make their own beds and clean up their own rooms, while admitting that, as first lady, she took advantage of the service.
She also discusses the difficulties of being judged by her choice of clothes, and the extra level of scrutiny afforded the first black first family, like the time Fox News branded her playful fist bump with her husband on the presidential campaign trail “a terrorist fist jab,” which wasn’t even a term until E.D.
Hill spouted it on air. As Obama recalls: “Barack and I lived with an awareness that we ourselves were a provocation.”
But there’s also time enough in the film’s 89 minutes for a look back at the Obamas’ courtship; a visit to their former (pre-White House) home; and an introduction to the genial Agent Alan — part of her security detail — and her older brother Craig, whom she says was always her mother’s favourite. She remembers one Thanksgiving dinner at the White House — butlers all around, fine food, expensive wine — and her mom craning her neck and demanding: “Where’s Craig?”
It’s also lovely to watch Obama interacting with underprivileged and underserved young people, a task she clearly relishes and a cause for which she cares deeply. We hear her before a book signing explaining the importance of eye contact and listening and empathy, but when the event begins, it’s pretty clear that it all comes naturally. cknight@postmedia.com