PRESIDENTIAL POWER
Harrelson rises to new heights to portray ‘LBJ’
Tothe list of psychos, lunatics, weirdos and dimwits played by Woody Harrelson, we can now add a legendary statesman. Few would have guessed what a good fit the actor would be for this role, outside of the fact that both the actor and person he plays were born in Texas.
In Rob Reiner’s stirring and fiercely relevant “LBJ,” Harrelson assumes the mantle of the former Texas senator and majority leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, who became the unlikely vice presidential candidate of 1960 Democratic presidential nominee and young Harvard-educated Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy (an excellent Jeffrey Donovan of Amesbury), and JFK’s successor after his assassination in 1963. Perhaps because actors and politicians both must deliver performances in a public arena and require a strong sense of stagecraft, even beneath a layer of latex makeup, Harrelson triumphs, while winking at his admirers as if to say: Can you believe this?
The action of the screenplay by Joey Hartstone (“The Good Fight”) begins at Dallas Love Field, where Air Force One arrives with the president and vice president as well as their wives on board, including Johnson’s wife, ally and soul mate Lady Bird (a spectacular Jennifer Jason Leigh). The action then flashes back to Johnson in his days as majority leader, wheeling, dealing and slugging scotch in his office at the Capitol like a Texas cattle rancher at an auction. As a Democrat from the South, Johnson has credibility with Southern voters, who would otherwise reject the Yankee upstart Kennedy and side with the Southern Democratic Caucus led by racist Georgia Sen. Richard Russell (Richard Jenkins).
Mixing archival black-andwhite and color footage with his live-action scenes, Reiner, whose directing career has languished somewhat since the 2007 hit “The Bucket List,” has made a film that is politically astute, psychologically insightful and often funny.
Harrelson is riveting as the politician who prefers to answer a question with a story, usually one with a Texas twang and a proverb or a ribald punchline. Leigh’s Lady Bird is proof of the adage that behind every great man is a great — or perhaps greater — woman.
Perhaps inspired by the rise and election of Donald Trump, Reiner, a vocal Trump detractor, breathes life into one of his underappreciated political heroes, who not only takes on his own party’s Southerners in great scenes with Jenkins’ Russell and gives us the Civil Rights Act, but also creates Medicare and Medicaid. Reiner, moreover, has the nerve to portray Robert F. Kennedy (a standout Michael Stahl-David) as arrogant and condescending.
“LBJ” reportedly covers much of the same ground as Robert Schenkkan’s awardwinning play “All the Way” with a Tony-winning Bryan Cranston. Johnson was also recently played by John Carroll Lynch in “Jackie” (2016) and Sean McGraw in “Parkland” (2013), both worthwhile films.
In “LBJ,” the president who declares a war on poverty is eventually undone and forced out of office by the war in Vietnam. But that is left for the closing captions. In the film itself, what we see is a great man — and a great actor — rise to the occasion and make the United States proud at a time of deep loss and national mourning. Those were the days.