Warm Springs
by Joseph Sargent
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DVD details
Actor: Cynthia Nixon, David Paymer, Kathy Bates, Kenneth BranaghDirector: Joseph Sargent
Brand: HBO Home Video
Writer: Margaret Nagle
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 4.0; Spanish (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 4.0; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Unknown
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-08-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 92752
Studio: HBO
Product features:
- Actors: Kenneth Branagh, Cynthia Nixon, David Paymer, Tim Blake Nelson, Matt O'Leary.
- Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
- Language: English. Subtitles: English, French, Spanish.
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only).
- Rated: NR. Run Time: 121 minutes.
DVD Reviews of Warm Springs
DVD Review: Remarkably faithful depiction of FDR's years of recovery
Summary: 4 Stars
Along with Lincoln, FDR is far and away my favorite president. I love them above all for the
The film has a number of historical inaccuracies. For instance, Roosevelt specified the design of the car he drove and it was not a surprise gift, tough as all biographies recount, he was an atrocious, very fast driver who terrified all who rode with him. The driving was, however, crucial in his development as a person because in driving around the larger area around Warm Springs, he gained a vastly deeper insight into the lives of poor, rural Americans. Early in the film he tells Louis Howe, with no intended irony, that he is a man of the people. That would eventually be true, but it was almost entirely because of what he learned in overcoming his polio and getting to know the people of rural Georgia. The scene where FDR is seen talking to a number of people surrounding his car as Eleanor rides away in the train corresponds to many accounts of his time in Georgia. Although Franklin had a serious problem with intimacy in relationships, he excelled in casual encounters with people and had an easy familiarity with casual strangers.
The worst historical inaccuracy is the depiction of Louis Howe. It is pretty much a travesty. All biographers agree that no one did more for FDR following his polio affliction than Howe. No one spent more time with him working directly with him on his rehabilitation. The film suggests that Howe was somewhat remote from him during these years. The truth is that he was the major presence in both Franklin and Eleanor's life. As was Missy Lehand. Where was she? She makes a token appearance, but she went from playing a minor role in his life in his law firm after leaving the Department of the Navy to being a major addition. She even went on boat trips with him. It was Howe who worked with FDR in his technique for appearing to be able to walk on braces while leaning on someone's arm. David Paymer did a credible job as Howe, though he was vastly too good looking for the role. Howe liked to describe himself as the ugliest man in America and good photos tend to bear this out. The film also somewhat exaggerates Eleanor's role in these years. She was crucial later as his representative to the rest of the world, but that came later. It also hints that things were a tad more affectionate between them than all accounts indicate that they were. I've not read any accounts that Eleanor was a major presence during his learning to "walk," though Louis definitely was. And it is true that he preferred to use Eliot in his walks, though James was also pressed into service.
Some of the things the film gets accurately are that FDR did spend almost all of his financial assets in buying Warm Springs. I also like that they hinted as his absolutely atrocious cocktails, which everyone agreed were undrinkable though irrefusable. Cocktail hour during his White House years was an essential daily ritual. The dreadfulness of his carefully made cocktails came, it is reported, from his heavy use of vermouth and his light use of gin. To make things worse, he used very poor gin.
But all and all I thoroughly enjoyed the film. Much of it was filmed on location, either in Warm Springs or in Hyde Park. Even though he returned to active political life after his nominating speech for Al Smith in 1924, he continually returned to Warm Springs for the rest of his life. He went there with Lucy Mercer in 1945 and died there after a brain aneurysm. he always saw it as a spiritual retreat and he never lost his attachment to the place. Branagh did not look especially like FDR, but did a credible job, as did Cynthia Nixon and Paymer. I also loved the look of the film. I never had a moment when I could not accept it for the early 1920s and I truly loved seeing the scenes at both Warm Springs and Hyde Park. It is definitely a film I recommend to others.
I enjoyed seeing a couple of people in supporting roles. I had trouble for a while identifying who the actor playing FDR's black valet Roy Collier was, but then it hit me that it was Nelsan Ellis, a couple of years before getting the role of Lafayette on TRUE BLOOD. He doesn't get a lot of lines in this film, but he gets a great deal of screen time. I liked that he was shown as a presence in FDR's life. He stayed with FDR for years, and literally put him to bed each night during his White House years and each morning helped get him up. Someone even closer to my heart is Felicia Day, who plays Heloise, one of the polio patients at the inn (she plays the red-headed former dancer who had obviously attempted suicide. She is probably best known as the creator, writer, producer, and star of the online series THE GUILD (its Season Three has just been released on DVD as an Amazon Only special). She is also known as the female lead of DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG and as a guest on BUFFY Season 7 as one of the Potential Slayers and on DOLLHOUSE as guest star on perhaps the two most celebrated episodes of the series, "Epitaph One" and "Epitaph Two: The Return." She even gets to sing a song in this one, though one of her talents, that of playing the violin, has never to my knowledge been put on display in any form. By the way, if you are a fan of THE GUILD, if you pay very close attention you will see Teal Sherer, a very beautiful handicapped actress who always appears in a wheelchair in her roles. On THE GUILD Season 3 she played the very funny Venom, the member of a rival and somewhat evil gaming guild. She had a host of very, very funny moments where she threatens others by detailing all the terrible things that she will do to herself. I wonder if this is perhaps where they met.
Description of Warm Springs
WARM SPRINGS - DVD MovieWarm Springs is a riveting, deeply moving film about a lesser-known chapter in the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the American president who saw his country through the dark, terrible times of the Great Depression and most of World War II. Before those epochal events, however, Roosevelt spent time in a political wilderness, groomed for high office but struck down by polio at age 39. Warm Springs is the fascinating story of Roosevelt's painful journey from despair back to wisdom and leadership. Kenneth Branagh gives an emotionally raw, courageous performance as FDR, estranged from his wife, Eleanor (a near-luminous Cynthia Nixon), and his political guru (David Paymer) while ambivalently seeking rehabilitation at Warm Springs, a broken-down spa in the backwoods of Georgia. Mired in misery, misanthropy, and drink, Roosevelt is coaxed back to civilized behavior and a glimmer of altruism by the spa's ailing, folksy manager, Tom Loyless (a remarkable Tim Blake Nelson), and the ministrations of a progressive-minded, physical therapist (solid work by Kathy Bates). Word of Roosevelt's improvement in the buoyant, mineral-rich waters of Warm Springs draws other polio victims--some of whom endure terrible discrimination and misery while traveling?to the spa. In time, these hopeful, all-ages paraplegics form a community that inspires a sense of mission in Roosevelt, setting the stage for his return to the political arena. Surehanded, 80-year-old veteran director Joseph Sargent (on a roll following his lovely, 2004 cable movie Something the Lord Made) has made a pitch-perfect and intimate, historical drama one never wants to see end. --Tom Keogh
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