{"id":49058,"date":"2016-09-11T19:40:05","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T19:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49058"},"modified":"2016-11-24T01:34:07","modified_gmt":"2016-11-24T01:34:07","slug":"49058","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49058","title":{"rendered":"Toronto Film Review: \u2018Barry\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto Film Review: \u2018Barry\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Variety<\/a>
\n2016-09-10<\/p>\n

Owen Gleiberman<\/strong><\/a>, Chief Film Critic<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nDevon Terrell<\/a> in Barry<\/em><\/a>. Courtesy of TIFF<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

Set in 1981, a canny and absorbing drama paints a highly convincing portrait of Barack Obama<\/a> when he was a 20-year-old college student in New York<\/a>, still piecing together who he was.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the movie world, there is often a fine line between coincidence and karma. It\u2019s not really all that hard to fathom how two filmmakers, within a year of each other, could each come up with the notion of making a kind of snapshot biopic about the young Barack Obama<\/a>. Yet the fact that both movies are emerging near the tail-end of the Obama presidency is surely no accident. The time has come to take stock, and Obama, at the twilight of his leadership, with eight years of policy and scrutiny, controversy and (yes) celebrity behind him, is ripe for the kind of mythological intimacy that the movies, perhaps uniquely, can provide.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouthside With You<\/a>,\u201d the Sundance<\/a> hit that was released into theaters just two weeks ago, is a deft and observant talkathon that turns Barack and Michelle Obama\u2019s<\/a> first date into a touching political spin on \u201cBefore Sunrise<\/a>.\u201d The Barack of that movie, which is set on a single day in 1989, is still finding his way, but he\u2019s already a precocious young version of the Obama we know: impeccable and confident, a fusion of insight and arrogance and clarity and empathy, speaking in those rolling information-age cadences.<\/p>\n

The Barack Obama we meet in \u201cBarry<\/a>,\u201d on the other hand (a movie set eight years earlier), is a very different sort of cat, a young man you feel you scarcely know at all, because he doesn\u2019t totally know himself \u2014 which turns out to be the theme of the movie. As played by the canny Australian actor Devon Terrell<\/a>, he\u2019s not even Barack yet, he\u2019s just Barry, rolling with the punches, a slightly gawky handsome angular dude with a fringe of Afro and a way of falling into pensive trances when he\u2019s chain-smoking. Terrell nails the clipped vibe of awareness, and a youthful version of the stare, to an uncanny degree. His Barry is reasonably self-possessed, with a lot of ideas, but he doesn\u2019t have a clue as to how they fit together. He\u2019s not the talkative lawyer-professor we\u2019re used to. He\u2019s tentative, his brashness weighed down by hidden doubts…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto Film Review: \u2018Barry\u2019 Variety 2016-09-10 Owen Gleiberman, Chief Film Critic Devon Terrell in Barry. Courtesy of TIFF Set in 1981, a canny and absorbing drama paints a highly convincing portrait of Barack Obama when he was a 20-year-old college student in New York, still piecing together who he was. In the movie world, there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,1245,5,8,20],"tags":[24956,24957,24958,15677,23493],"class_list":["post-49058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-biography","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-devon-terrell","tag-owen-gleiberman","tag-tiff","tag-toronto-international-film-festival","tag-variety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49058"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50154,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49058\/revisions\/50154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}