Movie Review

This two-part, three-hour-long biography of President Woodrow Wilson uses photos, letters, newsreels, insights from eminent historians, and filmed reenactments to tell its story. Some recent scholarship on Wilson is addressed, although a few hoary stereotypes are revived as well. For people who know little about Wilson, such as undergraduate students, the work is an adequate introduction to the man and his work. Historians, however, will find the piece somewhere between shallow and stultifying.

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Creating a decent TV biography of any famous individual is challenging, particularly a biography that will interest general audiences without vexing scholars. TV demands moving pictures, and there seems to be a shortage of surviving newsreels of Wilson. The producers compensate by panning still pictures, à la Ken Burns, bringing them to life. However, they seem to have a limited number of stills; thus, they use the same pictures repeatedly. The best feature of the film is the reenactments. They illustrate minor vignettes from Wilson's life: young Tommy stuggling with dyslexia and later playing catch at Princeton; an older Wilson welcoming a torchlight parade arriving at his porch to celebrate victory in the 1912 presidential race; Wilson wandering the halls of the White House a few years later, grieving over the loss of his first wife. Most are shot from behind, below, at a distance, and so on, so the reenactors do not have to look too much like their real-life counterparts. The actress Linda Hunt narrates, and other actors read from letters, speeches, and diaries.

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