Movie Review

Eleanor Roosevelt is a mass of contradictions—a master power broker who deftly concealed her own influence, a fiercely private woman who opened her heart with amazing candor to a wide variety of confidants, a devoted political wife who often criticized her husband's policies, and an upper-class Victorian woman who managed to transcend many of the confines of her economic status.	1
Her story, like that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, has often been told and told poorly. This film is an attempt to depict ER in all her political and personal complexity. The director, Sue Williams, assembled an advisory board of ER historians to help her craft an engaging yet accurate script. This reviewer was part of that team and as a result witnessed the often fierce struggle between personal narrative and political action. Many of the history advisers wanted ER's public and private political actions to receive as much attention as her private and public personal relations. The production team countered our insistence with their own determination to tell the story of how ER became the most famous woman of her era. Williams insisted that many familiar stories be retold because most of the world did not know them and that you could not understand ER without understanding her painful childhood, FDR's affair with Lucy Mercer, the reconstitution of her marriage, and her most cherished relationships. While I and some other advisers would have liked more discussion of ER's political contributions, Williams did depict ER as a complicated, complex woman whose commitment to democracy rivaled that of FDR.	2
The ER of Eleanor Roosevelt is like no ER we have seen before. Using a wide variety of interviews and primary sources (print, video, and audio), Williams expands the traditional depiction of ER beyond woman scorned to give us woman struggling to rebuild her life and her career once her vision of her marriage crumbled. It skillfully negates the image of ER as woman of sorrow who turned to the world for love when she could find none in her own home. Instead, we see ER building friendships, forging political alliances, and redefining herself in the process. The film offers the first video discussion of ER's relationships with Earl Miller and Lorena Hickok and, through interviews with Blanche Wiesen Cook and Trude Lash, gives us insights into ER that previous filmmakers avoided.	3
The political portrait of ER, though truncated, is accurate, dramatic, and well told. ER's well-known commitment to the Arthurdale community for West Virginia miners becomes more compelling with visits to the homesteads, interviews with those with whom she worked, and newsreel footage of ER's visits. Historians and colleagues recount ER's political disagreements with FDR over housing, women working, civil rights, and social security. ER's 1943 visit to the Pacific theater is juxtaposed to the blame she received for the Detroit race riots. Still treated as "the nation's conscience," Williams's ER is also a committed political leader. Her post–White House life is collapsed into approximately thirty minutes, which concentrate on her involvement with the United Nations, her distrust of John F. Kennedy, and her civil rights work.	4
As strong as this portrayal is, key issues are missing or receive short shrift. ER is not exempt from the controversies surrounding FDR and Harry S. Truman. The film could have cut one of the family interviews to discuss ER's personal and political response to antilynching, internment, the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, "India and the Awakening East," and the creation of Israel. Eleanor Roosevelt was not perfect, and she struggled to craft her own political vision just as she struggled to develop her ultimately fine-tuned political skills. This is a compelling story that needs to be told in more detail than is presented here.	5
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