Kerry Washington gets our vote in ‘Confirmation’
She perfectly and sensitively portrays Anita Hill’s ordeal
Anita Hill and Kerry Washington both know the power of restraint.
For Hill, whose accusations of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee (and now Justice) Clarence Thomas are the centerpiece of HBO’s sturdy Confirmation (Saturday, 8 ET/PT, out of four), restraint became a watchword. In the midst of the media frenzy during Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings, faced with senatorial inquisitors who attacked everything from her morals to her memory to her sanity, she maintained a quiet, dignified calm that refuted every attempt to label her “hysterical,” the typical attack used on women who dared to speak up.
Given the steady deliberation Hill displayed, Washington might seem an odd pick to portray her. Most of us, after all, know her from Scandal, where she’s given a weekly invitation to express every emotion and mood, no matter how big, unlikely or nonsensical.
In Confirmation, her role constrains her — and, paradoxically, liberates her to do what may be her best work yet. She expertly captures Hill’s emotionally drained speaking style, a necessity these days, when anyone can watch clips for comparison. Yet what’s equally impressive is her use of silence, in the way she watches Thomas on TV, breathing slowly and weighing whether she should put herself forward, or the way she closes her eyes and gathers herself before she speaks.
It’s a lovely performance in a film that, despite being about Thomas’s hearings and despite making some obvious attempts at balance, is really about Hill. She is the story’s emotional focus as we retrace one of our first public lessons in what awaits those who wander into the morass of sexual harassment. Laced with news footage, Con
firmation begins with Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It is set to sail through the Senate, until Hill is discovered by two aides, played by Grace Gummer and Zoe Lister-Jones, who with Washington give the movie its heart and its heroes.
And so begins the back and forth as writer Susannah Grant and director Rick Famuyiwa try to walk down the center of the story. We may see more of Hill, but Thomas (in a very good turn by Wendell Pierce) gets his own, spirited chance to defend himself.
Yet for whatever attempts at balance they may have taken, the film inevitably tilts Hill’s way. You can see it in the way Hill is shot and framed when we’re catching her in private, and in a crucial if basic fact: The script gives you no rational reason to think Hill is lying. The argument that she did it for political reasons is instantly dismissed; the attacks on her sanity are justifiably ridiculed.
Nor does it help that everyone who supports Thomas comes across badly — though to be fair, outside of Jeffrey Wright as Hill’s chief attorney, those lined up against Thomas don’t fare very well either. But at least Sen. Joe Biden (Greg Kinnear) is allowed to seem well-meaning, if incompetent. There is nothing about
Confirmation that’s transformative, but it’s solid work about an important moment in our history. And for TV purposes, it’s a work that allows Washington to show what a fine actor she can be. Or, if you prefer, to confirm it.