Movie "LBJ" (2016) adds nothing to "All the Way"

My first reaction to "LBJ" could have been the same words used by Roger Ebert after seeing "The Three Stooges" movie. The movies shared a nostalgic purpose. Their creators no doubt sensed grand purpose. The real Three Stooges entertained a generation of moviegoers during the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. And "LBJ?" We're making contact with the sweet part of the bat in connection with the boomers. Boomers can tell you in great detail where they were and how they heard about the JFK assassination. I was in Mrs. Peterson's third grade class at Longfellow Elementary School in Morris MN.
The two movies I'm referencing seemed to get a fair amount of traction in reaching an audience. But Roger Ebert said of "The Three Stooges" movie: "Was this necessary?" And I'll staple that comment to the 2016 cinematic offering "LBJ." The basis for my feelings? It's odd this movie should come out so closely on the heels of "All the Way." I found "All the Way" to be a more effective movie. It's about the Civil Rights Act but it could just as easily be seen as a biopic about Lyndon Baines Johnson. I'll never forget the scene where Johnson takes Hubert Humphrey across a lake, by surprise, in his amphibious car! A conspicuous portrayal of Humphrey would seem necessary in a movie about Johnson.
Because of my fondness for "All the Way," I found "LBJ" to have a redundant quality about it. "LBJ" takes us further back in Johnson's career than we'd really care to go. OK so he was a cunning politician who knew how to climb the ladder of power. Nothing unique or distinctive about that. His wife is seriously downplayed. I wish we'd heard the quote from her about how "I spent my inheritance to finance Lyndon's first campaign, and it was the best investment I ever made."
Somewhere I'm sure you can find a definition of "riding coattails." Such a definition should surely be accompanied by a picture of Lyndon Johnson, because he most surely rode the coattails of the deceased JFK to win in a landslide in 1964. Surely this decisive win had little to do with any inherent charm or heroic characteristics of the man himself. He seemed as unglamorous as JFK was glamorous.
Chris Matthews of MSNBC told us that when Lyndon Johnson left the presidency, "he went back to Texas and smoked himself to death." Did we see that habit in "LBJ?" I'm not going to re-watch the movie to see. I remember a critic putting down the movie "Pearl Harbor" because none of the GIs were seen smoking.
Many critics have pointed out the excessive makeup applied to Woody Harrelson in order to play LBJ. But they don't seem to use this as a serious point of indictment for the movie. Most are inclined to admire Harrelson and to consider him a trooper for making this movie. The extent of makeup bothered me. Such makeup can endanger the health of the wearer. I'm reminded of the makeup job for Howard Stern, when he had a TV show many years ago, when he tried to portray William Shatner in Star Trek. Stern didn't even look like Captain Kirk but he rather looked like a monstrosity, sort of like the Phantom of the Opera.
I felt sorry for Harrelson under all that makeup.
"All the Way" had already made the point about Lyndon Johnson that needed to be made: he was a southerner who was readily amenable to bending on racism to accomplish an outcome he felt was inevitable. "All the Way" showed us Johnson's masterful cajoling techniques. Humphrey was the northern liberal who didn't have to bend at all. Johnson had to implore fellow southerners on how "the train is leaving the station." In "All the Way" he tells George Wallace "I'm not going to be remembered in history with the likes of you."
It never seemed a matter of pure principle with Johnson. He was master of he pragmatic.
The movie "LBJ" would have achieved a grander purpose, setting it apart from its predecessor, if it had probed further our slide into the Vietnam war, and Johnson's negligence in connection with this. "The train is leaving the station" meant that fundamental civil rights legislation was coming no matter what. The tragic escalation of Vietnam seems not in retrospect to have been inevitable. Maybe movies shy away from this because it's embarrassing to consider such failure and mendacity by our leaders.
Civil rights accorded basic rights to countless people for whom it was a huge step forward. Vietnam cost the lives, literally, of tens of thousands of young men who should have had their future in front of them. Our leaders lied to us because they didn't want to admit it was a mistake. Their fear was of "losing" the war. Well, we sure did go and lose it. Think of those images of desperate people trying to cling to helicopters at the end. The 1970s developed into a "funk" because we seemed rather ashamed of ourselves.
Now, here's a more novel and interesting movie idea than "LBJ": a movie about the then-controversial Smothers Brothers TV show!
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com