Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 4 February

Becoming (Hallgren, 2020)

Yesterday I men­tioned all the atten­tion that the Melania doc­u­ment­ary got last week­end — media atten­tion that did not res­ult in tick­ets sold or box office earnt — and I linked to an art­icle by the Southern Punk Project that sum­mar­ised all of the reviews of the film so that you could feel informed without actu­ally hav­ing to watch it yourself.

A day later, that writer fol­lowed this up by point­ing out that a great many people are protest­ing the exist­ence of Melania by doing a thing that is likely to enrage the first lady and her orange-hued hus­band more than almost any­thing else — watch­ing Becoming, the 2020 doc­u­ment­ary about former first lady Michelle Obama, thereby boost­ing its stats to levels they can only dream of.

As it turns out, due to lock­down I was filling in on RNZ At the Movies when Becoming came out and I fea­tured it on the show on 13 May 2020:

In 2018, book­shops around the world had reas­on to be pro­foundly grate­ful for former American first lady Michelle Obama as her book, Becoming, stormed the best­seller lists for months and found its way into mil­lions of Christmas stockings.

Now, a couple of years later, the Obama’s new movie pro­duc­tion com­pany – Higher Ground – has launched a doc­u­ment­ary about the mam­moth book tour for Netflix. The film is also called Becoming.

Now, full dis­clos­ure, my day job is at the NZ Booksellers Association and, in our cur­rent restrained book­selling envir­on­ment, I’m sure all my mem­bers will be dab­bing away a tear at the sight of hun­dreds of people queuing up for a signed copy and a chance to meet an author. One day we will be able to do this again, right?

Directed and shot by Nadia Hallgren, Becoming uses the big arena events that formed the spine of that tour as the struc­ture for her film. More than 20 sold our shows across America, with dif­fer­ent celebrity hosts in each city – includ­ing Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Colbert and Reese Witherspoon. Hallgren clev­erly recog­nises that many of the stor­ies told from those stages were repeated in every ven­ue so she cuts them togeth­er in a way that make them feel like seam­less racon­teur­ing but with every sen­tence Ms Obama is wear­ing a dif­fer­ent out­fit and talk­ing to a dif­fer­ent host.

It’s an eleg­ant con­ceit reveal­ing the show­busi­ness truth behind the folksy stories.

But they are often very funny folksy stor­ies, don’t get me wrong. Ms Obama is a very fine storyteller with a wicked sense of humour and a keen intel­li­gence that makes clear that she was by no means a second-fiddle to the president.

Becoming is very much author­ised by its sub­ject – and the Obama’s doc­u­ment­ary mak­ing endeav­ours have a very clear pro­gress­ive agenda. They pro­duced American Factory which won the Oscar for Best Documentary a few months ago. So, this is not a warts and all por­trait, but I can’t ima­gine any­one with an eye on American polit­ics won’t be nos­tal­gic for the days when thought­ful and artic­u­late people lived in the White House.

Meanwhile, spot­ted on BlueSky earli­er today:

Also in that epis­ode of At the Movies: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first film made in Europe, The Truth star­ring Catherine Deneuve and Ethan Hawke, and the doc­u­ment­ary Spaceship Earth. Listen to the whole thing here.

Where to watch Becoming

Worldwide: Streaming on Netflix