Has anybody seen the excellent HBO movie “All The Way?” Still in rotation, it stars a spookily convincing Brian Cranston, recreating his Broadway role as the larger-than-life Lyndon Johnson as he engages with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights struggle, while Vietnam slowly grows mostly offstage, like an ignored tumor.
If you’ve read the Caro biographies you know that Johnson in person was a Shakespearian figure: larger than life, brilliant, flawed, fascinating, often repellant, sometimes inspiring, and impossible to turn away from. (So different from the mealy-mouthed mush-face we watched making speeches on TV.) The movie is worthy of its subject, with lots of echoes of contemporary events, lots of food for thought. They say you don’t want to know how legislation gets passed or how sausage is made. This is an unsentimental and (to me) gripping account of a scarily masterful sausage-maker at work.
Critics have been luke-warm, pointing out that, while Cranston is as good as at any time in his career (which is saying something), the other characters are not explored in depth. True enough, but the movie is about Johnson at work within the context of his moment in time, and there it succeeds (I think) brilliantly. It reminds us of what can happen politically, and how it works, and what happens afterwards— in other words, where our current politics comes from.
I’m kind of amazed I saw it. I had no idea it was on. My channel listings told me it was a 2005 comedy starring Dennis Hopper as Frank Sinatra! Is evil corporation Comcast trying to keep us from watching a movie about the last serious proponent of New-Deal style social legislation (Medicare, Head Start, Voting Rights Act, etc) at this key political moment?????
Seriously, though, check it out. It ends when he beats Goldwater. There’s a sequel due next year. I can’t wait.